Michael Moore’s “Capitalism, a Love Story” a Refutation of Itself

I just saw Michael Moore’s new movie. Moore’s creativity and humor have decreased roughly in proportion to his ever-increasing dogmatism. A good comedian, after all, needs the capacity to step back and lighten up; genuine stridency and urgency to force a perspective is at odds with comedy.

He does manage a funny moment or two (not coincidentally when he demonstrates ability to laugh at himself).  Confronting businesspeople on The Street (and employing his favorite technique–shoving the mic into the person’s face) he asks a Wall Streeter for a comment, and the man replies “Don’t make any more movies.”

Here viewers get a glimpse of the wit and creativity that put Moore on the map with “Roger & Me,” his first major film.  But that glimpse is all too brief; for the most part “Capitalism, a Love Story” is preachy, illogical, repetitious, and boring. Watching it feels like completing an assignment from a social worker; you can’t get up for popcorn without feeling guilty you are walking out on someone’s sob story (as such, it gives us a taste of the tedium we could no doubt look forward to in a world without capitalism). The film is basically a pastiche of hard luck stories related to the recent mortgage banking crisis, and interviews with politicians who echo one another in condemning the U.S. system. It is long on negativity, short on new ideas, and utterly lacking in the spark that made Moore’s first film both consciousness-raising and delightful.

Ultimately, perhaps the most ridiculous thing about, “Capitalism, a Love Story,” is that, as a major box office release, both it and its director owe its wide exposure, and probably its very existence, to the American film industry. And what’s more capitalist than that?

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