JANUARY 9, 2016
— PALM SPRINGS, CA
When I heard that Michael Moore’s latest documentary was titled “Where To Invade Next,” I thought, “Here we go again,” anticipating another anti-military-incursion screed that has made Moore’s name synonymous in some right-wing circles with knee-jerk left-wing anti-Americanism.
What a shock it was to find that “Where To Invade Next” is only tangentially interested in the military but is far more concerned with social welfare. It is surprisingly sunny for a Moore documentary, as the director takes his American flag and “invades” various countries in Europe and Africa in search of social policies and laws that are designed to benefit the populace, regardless of class. His idea is to to “plunder” these innovative ideas and steal them back to America (where they would undoubtedly be killed by Congress).
Moore travels to Italy, whose citizens get, by law, 6 weeks of vacation per year and 5 months of maternity leave with no reduction in productivity. On to France, where French public school students get gourmet meals for lunch in an effort to teach them how to eat more nutritiously. Then to Finland, whose students are ranked #1 in the world who achieved that without any homework or standardized tests, and Slovinia where college tuition is free and student debt is non-existent.
The film turns a bit darker when a visit to Germany reveals how the younger generations of Germans have no denials about the country’s Nazi atrocities and Cold War past, own up to it and resolve to make positive contributions to the world. (The strength of this segment might have been more effectively placed as the end of the movie, as its tone, though dark, is inspirational.)
In Portugal, Moore learns from local police that drugs are legal, so, as a result, drug-related crime has dropped sharply. Here Moore gets a little more didactic when he posits the theory that, in the U.S., Republicans favor stricter drug laws so that drug arrests, which result in the disproportionate incarceration of African-American men, permanently remove those likely pro-Democratic voters from being able to vote. Can’t wait for Fox News’ response to that.
There’s prison reform in Norway, and huge progress in women’s rights both in Tunisia and in Iceland, whose authorities also imprisoned the bankers whose actions prompted that country’s financial meltdown, an step that the United States failed to take in its financial crisis.
Moore’s critics will likely take “Where To Invade Next” as another “America=bad, rest of the world=good” kind of polemic that they have used to dismiss Moore. And considering the harsh tone of several of his most recent docs, their point is understandable. But by the film’s conclusion, it is revealed that most of these other countries’ beneficial laws actually had their origins in the United States, but because of political concerns, they were never as effectively implemented here.
Is the film fair? Seriously? It’s a Michael Moore documentary. He is a didactic documentarian, anxious to make his points and not really interested in balance, which is certainly one way to go. Is it simplistic? Probably. There’s little doubt that much more went into the political back-and-forth that put these laws on the books than the film reveals. And there’s the question of higher taxes in these countries to cover the cost of these programs, a query that Moore quickly addresses, noting that, yes, the taxes are slightly higher there, but they cover health-care-for-all and college tuition, which he argues Americans have to pay for out of their own pocket.
What’s hopeful about “Where To Invade Next” is that Michael Moore seems to have gotten his sense of humor back. For the first time in recent memory, this Moore film is at times laugh-out-loud funny. (And amazingly, there’s only one George W. Bush joke, and it gets an honest laugh.) Even better, the spirit behind the film is positive, aiming to bring some ideas that have proven to work in smaller countries to the table to see if they can work here.
In a way, it’s the left-wing version of the Trump slogan “Make America Great Again.”
GRADE: B
