The Truth According to Michael Moore
There are a handful of things you can count on during a presidential election year. Leap year kids finally get a birthday. Commander-in-chief wannabes lie through their teeth. And, if history repeats itself, as is so often the case, filmmaker Michael Moore will be causing problems for powerful people somewhere.
So far in 2004 Moore has helped reignite “deserter” cries over President Bush’s National Guard records. And with a documentary entitled Fahrenheit 9/11 set to drop later this year (probably conveniently timed to inflict massive amounts of Bush administration collateral damage), you can be certain Flint’s native son will be making headlines and causing headaches a lot during the coming months.
Which brings us to The Awful Truth (The Complete First Season). Following the demise of his short-lived television series TV Nation, Moore concocted The Awful Truth for Bravo. Far more outrageous and confrontational than its evolutionary predecessor, Truth did what Moore does best: got in the face of politicians and big business, and refused to back down.
At the show’s best, Truth combined scathing satire, pissed-off populism, and a bleeding liberal conscience into hilarious guerilla-style television. Behind Moore’s beefy Midwestern grin, there’s an obnoxious high school journalist out not so much to scoop the town daily, but to embarrass a few corporate Goliaths into doing the right thing.
Who could forget, for instance, Moore handing out funeral invitations to the employees of an HMO refusing to fund a pancreas transplant for a diabetic policyholder? (When that didn’t shame the public relations department into a feigned sense of morality, Moore and crew held a mock funeral outside the company’s headquarters.) Or what about bringing a “voice box” choir of throat cancer survivors to sing Christmas carols outside the home of Philip Morris CEO Michael Szymanczyk?
It’s when Moore tries to simply be funny that he falls flat on his face.
—Lloyd Babbit

February 26, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 9
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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