* * * Stars | Documentary. R. 110 minutes.
Michael Moore probably wouldn’t win a popularity contest. Despite his documentaries being not just informative and entertaining, but also box-office hits, the director may be as well known for turning his 2003 Academy Awards acceptance speech (for “Bowling for Columbine”) into a polemic against President George W. Bush and the Iraq war.
His latest movie, “Where to Invade Next,” is a Michael Moore production in every sense. It is funny and touching, and it has a lot to say about what we settle for as American citizens, and how much better our lives might be if we raised some hell.
To make this point, Moore employs a gimmick, facetiously vowing to invade a bunch of countries and loot their great ideas to bring to the States. The shtick doesn’t entirely hold up, even if Moore, outfitted in an Army-green jacket and camouflage baseball cap, insists on “planting” an American flag on the floor of the Portuguese health minister’s office.
He warms up the audience with some laugh-out-loud moments. “Have you ever noticed that Italians all look like they just had sex?” he asks.
In Finland, where kids are some of the brightest in the world, he learns they don’t have homework.
The stakes grow progressively higher and more emotional as Moore lumbers along, discovering equal rights for women in Iceland; humane prisons in Norway; free higher education — even for foreigners — in Slovenia; and government-funded women’s health clinics in Tunisia.
Along the way, Moore notes that a lot of these progessive ideas originated in America.
Moore’s goal is not to put down the U.S. Rather, he comes across as patriotic, in his own unique way, explaining that none of these countries were always like this, but that they’ve made innovative changes, and now they’re better off. Why can’t we do the same thing?
