America, please grow up! An immature film like this says a lot about the current state of the media in the US. The information provided isn‘t new and the path of the script goes from trying to make Bush and the Saudi Arabians look personally responsible for the tragic events on Sept. 11th 2001 ("Look, Bush is shaking hands with these dirty arabs!) to some lame "war is bad"-approach with crying moms and dads. It doesn’t get beyond the obvious "Don’t vote for"-George W. Bush message any sane person will probably agree with. So, the outcome is a very, very, very american movie for a very, very, very american audience only. You know, people who go to church and believe in "american justice". It says more about it’s potential audience than it says about the issue "Fahrenheit 9/11" is trying to deal with. It also says a lot about Michael Moore, who considers himself a "good american" and tries to point out that "a good american" wouldn’t have dealt with the arabs, wouldn’t have attacked other countries who never meant an harm to the US, wouldn’t have let 9/11 happen. He is using patriotism as a counter-force to prove that "good americans" wont behave the way Bush does. Anyone who reads a newspaper on a regular base can just laugh at this pseudo-journalistic way of making american patriotism something to be proud of again after a bunch of oil-millionaires fucked up.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" provides a simple way of thinking in terms of "good" and "evil" like the world is some sort of Disneyland. But that’s only one of the reasons why Michael Moore has failed this time. His entertainment-approach to journalism doesn’t work when it comes down to looking at the big picture. It’s good for explaining the mechanics of capitalism on a small scale like Moore did in "The Big One" or "Bowling For Columbine". It still works when the director follows army-recruiters around his hometown in Michigan where they hire the underprivileged, looking for a way to pay their rent and feed their kids.
Of course it’s not Moore’s fault that the land of the uneducated needs a movie like this to realize it‘s been screwed. If "Fahrenheit 9/11" helps getting Bush out of the White House, fine with me. But at the same time it‘s scary to see Moore act like he’s giving away some secret information while all the facts in this film should be standard-knowledge for any High School-kid. It’s a shame to listen to soldiers say things like: "Uh-oh, war isn’t like a video-game.it actually hurts." Moore argues the Iraq-war was wrong simply because the US have never been attacked by Iraq. Well, as far as I know the USA haven’t been attacked by Vietnam either. They were also not attacked by Nazi-Germany or all these countries in South America and a ketchup-millionaire is a capitalist too. What’s the point? Moore doesn’t attack american politics, he’s just having a personal war with Mr. Bush which he should have concentrated on. The result is a very simple-minded view of someone who still believes in some sort of "good" capitalism. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is just a lot of whining about the loss of "traditional american values". Moore wants to believe in a president as some sort of daddy who wouldn’t do anything wrong. "The good old days", when things were covered up more properly, yeah, right,... What exactly is it that you wanna be proud of again, Mr. Moore? Capitalism in general, slavery, oppression, militarism, nationalism, racism? Or are we just talking about apple-pie and moms and dads with their holy family-values? On that level "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a typical Disney-movie and the whole controversery about the release was nothing but good promotion. Sad to see the only opposition seems to be a filmmmaker playing hero...