Michael Moore's New Film

It's a stinker, says Slate:

...As soon as Moore takes on larger and slipperier issues, his gray-area-free moral clarity starts to feel like a dodge. The opening titles take place over security-camera footage of bank robberies, making clear Moore's opinion of the financial bailout: In his eyes, Henry Paulson and his former Wall Street cronies are stickup artists, pure and simple. However outraged one may be about the corporate greed that led the banking system to the verge of collapse, it seems disingenuous to imply that the collapse would not have happened had nothing been done. Even left-leaning economists argued for the necessity of some kind of rescue package, a reality that Moore ignores entirely. (By chopping up her interview into unfairly small sound bites, he even makes Elizabeth Warren, the tireless watchdog who heads the Congressional Oversight Panel, look like a do-nothing bureaucrat.)

In the movie's most painfully redundant scenes, Moore approaches the Manhattan headquarters of Goldman Sachs and other investment banks and stands outside with a bag, asking the doorman to let him in to reclaim America's money. Now that 20 years have passed since his first film, Roger and Me, can we all just agree to tap into our collective memory of these moments when Moore is refused entry into corporate high-rises by polite and embarrassed doormen (all of whom belong to the working class he so loves to champion)? We get it, Mike: The head of GM will not see you. The chairman of Goldman Sachs will not see you. The secretary of the U.S. Treasury will not see you. Waste any more footage on this tired gag, and your loyal fan base may start to feel the same way.

...Once again, Moore's goodhearted aims come into direct conflict with his bludgeoning tactics.