Review of Where to Invade Next (2015) by Danny L — 21 Feb 2016

Moore's past films have been interesting with respect to their ironic depictions of dysfunctions in the societal status quo. His best ideas were the ones that launched his career. Sad to say, his latest is cornball at its worst and it exists primarily as a vehicle for self-promotion rather than any kind of illumination. Therein lies the real problem: Moore once used his films to shine a spotlight upon important social issues in order to redress wrongs...and now his lightweight films simply exist to shine a spotlight upon his own self, in the most egotistical way possible, and the narcissism is absolutely insufferable.

Moore has never been a real documentarian in any classic sense, given that good documentary always presents the pros and cons of any issue. Instead, Moore takes an adamant biased position, then proceeds to propagandize it, without any attention paid to the opposing view. In that respect, as he's grown older, he's gotten far worse, becoming something like "the Goebbels" of extreme left wing ideology.

In terms of educational background pertaining to history, economics, science, sociology, and psychology, Moore always lacked badly, presenting arguments from the perspective of an immature, truant, student who acquired most of his lessons, not from erudite text materials nor insightful real life experience, but rather the airhead speculations and mindless gabbing emblematic of those who skipped class and frolicked daily in the school parking lot. The educational deficits are especially flagrant in this latest effort. For example, it is impossible to compare the USA to most other nations since America is an Empire, while most other countries are mere colonies existing under the protection of the Empire's military umbrella. As such, it is inevitable that those colony lands will have key and oft positive differences from the Empire nation since they are relieved of any imperative to arm themselves with a potent military force and, as such, are exempted from all the resultant problems. These kinds of inexcusable omissions and/or failures of analysis yield a very naive, simplistic, and juvenile narrative/interpretation of why things are the way they happen to be.

Anyway, of all Moore's films, this is the weakest and, when it's bad, it's agonizingly bad. I examined my watch no less than 15 times during this film and that's my own personal indicator of exasperation and impatience as one awaits or prays for the ending to appear.