| Michael Moore, the wicked genius behind Roger and Me and TV Nation, is not at 100% in The Big One. it's very good and very entertaining - his skill for 2nd unit fill footage to add to the narrative he stumbles upon during principal photography is still sharp as a knife. He was on a book promotion tour and decided just to grab a little footage in the towns he visited and see if he came up with anything. The part that weakens the narrative (in what seemed to me an uncharacteristically self-serving manner) is the clips of him speaking at various points in a more stand-up comic style approach, rather than letting the material speak for itself. His instinctual camera crew has his eye for the big picture and captures a lot of great footage, and I wanted more of it. |
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He does score a major coup in being granted an interview with Nike's CEO Brian (?) Knight. This is Moore at his finest, playing every card in his hand for the sake of art and a statement. He gets some sad stories and some happy ones, some amusing pranks and some unwitting self-humiliation on the part of some of his participants. As a recent laid-off person, I could groove on his line of the unfairness of it all, and even as I noted the irony of his commercial success aided by a big, soulless corporation, I could still feel he was on my side |
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He encourages all people with a jones for change and progress to get out of the basements of the Unitarian churches and to be active. His politics are not right or left so much as human.
If you are not familiar with Michael Moore, rent Roger and Me and then see this one. Whether or not you agree with him that enormously profitable companies should not reward employees by downsizing them, you have to agree with me that he has a special sense of people and images and how one voice over can make another image resonate especially strongly. I think he would have loved Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. He has a sentimental side and a lot of money and a lot of passion for what he does, and it all goes into his work - be it for pure humor, good-natured revenge (as on his show) or sheer
determination in the face of something he believes is wrong. But The Big One is not his opus, it is not his Citizen Kane, it is eminently watchable but somehow replete with unironic self-promotion. But I still liked it. The cojones on that guy! |
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