Capitalism Is Moore at His Messy Best

Filmmaker's full-on assault on the system is his richest work yet
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 2, 2009 6:37 AM CDT

Michael Moore makes Wall Street feel his wrath in Capitalism: A Love Story, and the results, say critics, are frequently annoying, sometimes brilliant, and guaranteed to provoke—in short, everything you'd expect from Moore.

  • The movie, Moore's "liviest, most radical" yet, is no "eye-glazing tutorial on debt swaps," writes Colin Covert at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Instead, the film gives us a rollicking review of economic outrages and a scalding critique of insatiable greed."

  • Moore's "scathing denunciation of captalism" is "often mordantly funny and, by lurching turns, scornful, rambling, repetitive, impassioned, mock-lofty, pseudo-lowbrow, faux-naïve, persuasive, tabloid-shameless and agit-prop-powerful," Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal.
  • Capitalism is "intermittently engaging, even persuasive," writes Noel Murray at the A.V. Club, but is weakened by Moore's failure to let the other side make its case. It would have been far more dramatic if Moore had entered a tea party throng "to argue the virtues of socialism, rather than shooting yet another scene outside an inaccessible corporate office."
(More movie review stories.)

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