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Movies

MIB: Moore Is Back and "protecting the Earth from the scum of corporate America"

Review: Corporate America as burlesque in 'The Big One'

Web posted on: Monday, June 08, 1998 5:50:12 PM

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- I was one of the five or six liberals in the United States who didn't love Michael Moore's first documentary, 1989's "Roger & Me." The movie, for all its outraged cheerleading against General Motors and the evil empire, seemed to me like a series of way-too-easy cheap shots. Yes, what GM did to the people of Flint, Michigan when they packed up their plant and left was appalling, but Moore could never get any legitimate points across for constantly trying to make everyone who wasn't him seem like a cretin.

Moore's laughing up his sleeve because Miss America knew nothing of Flint's depressed economic situation wasn't going to help anybody, and his guerrilla tactics (bursting into the headquarters of an international corporation with a camera crew in tow, demanding to speak to the CEO) were obviously designed not to work. Common sense tells you that no company is going to let a bunch of confrontational, uninvited journalists into their place of business, regardless of whether or not the guys in charge are a bunch of greedy bastards.

Clip: Moore interviews with Nike CEO
1.1Mb QuickTime movie

"The Big Ones" Theatrical trailer
4.1Mb QuickTime movie

The best thing that ever happened to Moore was not getting that interview with Roger, and I'm certain he never expected to get one in the first place. But it sure was amusing, and Moore managed to parlay a career as the avenging angel of the working class out of it, so who's being self-serving here? I'd like to pile into Moore's offices with a bunch of camera men and demand an answer. I'm sure I'd get a lot of ho-ho chuckling, but the response would almost certainly be just as evasive as the ones he got from GM.

That said, I laughed a lot during Moore's second movie, the more sensibly confrontational -- but just as self-serving -- "The Big One." This one, which takes place during the cross-country tour to promote Moore's book, "Downsize This," is a lot less self-important when dealing with the companies he's going after (sort of like an angrier David Letterman, there's more obvious jokiness going on), but by now Moore's shtick with the hopelessly abused and often unemployed workers of this country is starting to look like a Messiah complex.

The crowds of disenfranchised, jobless people who laugh at Moore's stories of harassing the Big Guys, then shell out 20 bucks for his book, whisper their tales of woe to him as if he can actually help them, and he eats it up. The problem is that, aside from one instance, he wouldn't be helping them any less if all he did was stick a wad of chewing gum in their former boss's hair. Moore's like a giant whoopee cushion, but he's somehow convinced himself that he's farting out Woody Guthrie tunes.

Yet a lot of this stuff is darkly hilarious. One of the best moments is when Moore bursts into the offices of Johnson Controls, a very successful, but nevertheless soon-to-be downsized, company that makes auto parts. They're going to be moving their factory to Mexico, and Moore has a gift for them -- a giant check for the amount of 85 cents that can be used to pay the first Mexican for his first hour of work at the new facility. Needless to say, the recipients are not amused.

I also liked Moore's visit to a Payday candy bar factory that showed a $20 million profit, but was still cutting way back on its workers in order to make more money. Moore is genuinely confused when he's told by a higher-up that, if the factory had been less successful, these people would still have jobs. At moments like this, the American manufacturing industry looks like something out of Kafka. You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Unlike "Roger & Me," there are a few asides by Moore that don't consist of butting heads with corporations, and they offer a welcome respite from the endlessly uneasy feeling you can get while watching him be plain old-fashioned obnoxious.

For instance, he wonders (as I did), if Republican candidate Steve Forbes ever blinked his eyes during his unsuccessful 1995 campaign for the presidency. I swear to God, I never saw him do it, and video footage would suggest that he's incapable of it. Moore tells an audience about his call to an eye doctor to look into it. The doctor claims that this behavior is impossible and therefore "not human."

At another point, Moore amusingly suggests that the United States should adopt "We Will Rock You" as the national anthem. It makes sense to me -- Freddie Mercury is at least as overrated as Francis Scott Key.

The movie culminates with Moore's one-on-one with the only CEO who has ever agreed to speak to him personally, Phil Knight, the head of Nike. Moore shows us footage of Indonesian children working in sweat shops, making Air Jordans for a few pennies a day, then he shows up with two plane tickets and offers Knight the opportunity to fly with him to Indonesia, just to check out the countryside.

Knight politely declines, and even says that he doesn't feel uncomfortable letting 14-year-olds work all day at poverty level wages. He seems like a nice enough guy, though, and that makes it all the more horrifying. Moore finally meets the face of evil, and it looks a lot like you and me, a disconcerting concept if ever there was one.


"The Big One" could open a lot of eyes about what big corporations do to the little guy in this country, but people who don't have a clue about the situation probably couldn't be bothered to see it anyway. Rated PG-13. 96 minutes.


rule

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