Film Review: WHERE TO INVADE NEXT

Michael Moore travels Europe; proves that it’s better than America in almost every way.

Michael Moore’s latest documentary is another preachy, biased, close-minded piece of liberal propaganda… and it’s quite excellent. BuzzHub must come clean: we’re Bernie Sanders supporters and opponents of war, economic inequality and fascistic drug laws. Hence, Moore’s WTIN is preaching to the choir. It sees the reliably sincere Moore visit an assortment of European nations to steal their good social policies for America’s benefit. Italy’s 8 weeks of paid leave, French school lunches, Icelandic gender equality and Slovenia’s free colleges are all drooled over by the wide-eyed filmmaker. It’s all beautiful stuff, much of it also available in BuzzHub’s native Ireland (which Moore didn’t seemingly care to visit). The sole questionable trip is to a Norwegian maximum-security jail, where the prisoners are given access to sharp kitchen knives and the maximum sentence (even for mass-mudering terrorist Anders Behring Breivik) is the absurdly gentle 21 years. Moore applauds this soft prison system; one wonders how often things go terribly wrong for the Norwegians…

The doc’s main message, underscored by a Berlin Wall finale, is that America has lost all that once made it so great, but that returning it to the “Greatest Country on Earth” isn’t as difficult as it may seem to the disillusioned revolutionaries of the mid-20th century. The ingredients exist; they need only to be recognised. The problem, as always, is that few outside Moore’s target audience (who are already on board for progress and change) will bother watching Where To Invade Next.