Although I was always fond of Moore's 'The Awful Truth', over the last couple of years I started to grow a disliking towards him and his documentaries, of which I thought 'Bowling' wasn't really saying anything and 'Fahrenheit', although an improvement, still took way too many liberties to really be taken seriously.
So here's 'Roger and Me', or 'A Humorous Look at How General Motors Destroy Flint, Michigan', as the subtitle is. Viewing these titles there are numerous errors to be found in it: 1. It ain't humorous. 2. GM did not 'destroy' Flint. 3. The title should be: Me, Me, Roger and then Me again.
Let's take all these points by the hand. First off, there is little humor to be found in 'Roger and Me'. It seems Moore doesn't really have his wit or originality from The Awful Truth yet, and it shows. As voice-over, he makes some supposedly humorous observations, but everybody can do that after-wards. It's when confronted eye-to-eye Moore should be at his best, but here he's more of an observer than questioner, until after-wards he finds his tongue back in the voice-over room.
The second point of which I am protesting is the claim that 'General Motors, and it's president Roger Smith in particular, destroyed Flint', the town Moore grew up in. GM simply decided it would be cheaper to move it's factories to Mexico. It's a simple, and logical, business decision, made by Smith because he is being payed to generate as much profit as he can for General Motors. Now, if Moore would have his way, then: 1. Business should not do the economically best thing. 2. The USA should shut it's border for foreign products. 3. Workers should come before stockholders. Now, I am not claiming such a system to be 'communist, therefore bad', but it is a *change of system* he would want to happen, not a change of a single decision by a single company. So he shouldn't seek up Roger Smith for that, but the US president, congress, he should have held a referendum. In other words, he should be fighting politics, not cooperations.
The third main problem, and we've seen it in his recent documentaries, is that Moore is a smug 'look at me, I'm so socially and politically correct' kinda person, who offers some questions but never seeks out to truly answer them. Within this documentary he follows the routine 'Rich and mean guy shuts down factories. Honest and good poor people suffer. Poor people forced to sit around doing nothing and having problems with the police because of rich guy'. End of story. There is never a true analysis, as said before, of the system, it's just picking an easy target to blame for everything that has gone wrong. And that's the end of the story. The title itself is misleading as well, as Roger Smith barely speaks a few words. In honesty, Moore tries but Smith refuses, over and over again. But years later, watching Moore unjustly slamming a good-willing Charlton Heston in 'Columbine', I'm sure Smith (if he's still alive), will see the justification for that refusal.
So, what is Roger and Me then? Other than one-sided (which was to be expected), it's also a pretty boring experience. If 'Columbine' had some humor and 'Fahrenheit' had an interesting issue at an interesting time, 'Roger and Me' fails on all accounts for making a good documentary. 3/10.
So here's 'Roger and Me', or 'A Humorous Look at How General Motors Destroy Flint, Michigan', as the subtitle is. Viewing these titles there are numerous errors to be found in it: 1. It ain't humorous. 2. GM did not 'destroy' Flint. 3. The title should be: Me, Me, Roger and then Me again.
Let's take all these points by the hand. First off, there is little humor to be found in 'Roger and Me'. It seems Moore doesn't really have his wit or originality from The Awful Truth yet, and it shows. As voice-over, he makes some supposedly humorous observations, but everybody can do that after-wards. It's when confronted eye-to-eye Moore should be at his best, but here he's more of an observer than questioner, until after-wards he finds his tongue back in the voice-over room.
The second point of which I am protesting is the claim that 'General Motors, and it's president Roger Smith in particular, destroyed Flint', the town Moore grew up in. GM simply decided it would be cheaper to move it's factories to Mexico. It's a simple, and logical, business decision, made by Smith because he is being payed to generate as much profit as he can for General Motors. Now, if Moore would have his way, then: 1. Business should not do the economically best thing. 2. The USA should shut it's border for foreign products. 3. Workers should come before stockholders. Now, I am not claiming such a system to be 'communist, therefore bad', but it is a *change of system* he would want to happen, not a change of a single decision by a single company. So he shouldn't seek up Roger Smith for that, but the US president, congress, he should have held a referendum. In other words, he should be fighting politics, not cooperations.
The third main problem, and we've seen it in his recent documentaries, is that Moore is a smug 'look at me, I'm so socially and politically correct' kinda person, who offers some questions but never seeks out to truly answer them. Within this documentary he follows the routine 'Rich and mean guy shuts down factories. Honest and good poor people suffer. Poor people forced to sit around doing nothing and having problems with the police because of rich guy'. End of story. There is never a true analysis, as said before, of the system, it's just picking an easy target to blame for everything that has gone wrong. And that's the end of the story. The title itself is misleading as well, as Roger Smith barely speaks a few words. In honesty, Moore tries but Smith refuses, over and over again. But years later, watching Moore unjustly slamming a good-willing Charlton Heston in 'Columbine', I'm sure Smith (if he's still alive), will see the justification for that refusal.
So, what is Roger and Me then? Other than one-sided (which was to be expected), it's also a pretty boring experience. If 'Columbine' had some humor and 'Fahrenheit' had an interesting issue at an interesting time, 'Roger and Me' fails on all accounts for making a good documentary. 3/10.