Roger & Me Movie Review

Have Nick (Kurt and Courtney) Broomfield and Michael (Roger & Me) Moore ever met? Just asking! Although they both have in-your-face interviewing techniques, Roger & Me is a much weightier documentary than Kurt and Courtney. After all, 30,000 people found themselves unemployed when General Motors left Flint, Michigan. For GM chairman Roger Smith to turn his back on the Flint community after its truck plant closed is a far more meaningful subject for investigation than the incoherent alcoholic ramblings of Kurt Cobain's wannabe hit man who wound up staggering into a train. If the so-called Gilded Age of the late 19th century had ever been examined by a documentarian of Michael Moore's caliber, a few myths about the Good Old Days would have been demolished. Moore contrasts the rosy babblings of Flint's rich citizens with the statements of former auto workers who know first-hand how devastating GM's departure really is. Moore can't get a meeting with Roger Smith for most of the movie and when he finally does encounter him, Smith's sole response is to decline to return to Flint. Roger & Me is hilarious, but also horrifying because it reveals how little power we have over our individual destinies when they're controlled by profit-loss statements. One of the more controversial interviews is with Bob Eubanks, a local boy who made good as host of The Newlywed Game. His sexist, racist comments seem extraneous unless you appreciate their context. Eubanks got his by getting out of town: You're on your own in Flint, folks! In that vein, pep talks by Pat Boone, Anita Bryant, and Robert Schuller are oblivious to the obvious: that the harsh lives of Flint residents are not due to a lack of optimism, but a very real fiscal depression, a direct result of a cold business decision in which they had no voice. Michael Moore, whose dad was a GM employee for 33 years, is a model of documen-tarians at their finest. He forces society to see and hear unpleasant ruths that are everyone's business.

1989 (R) 91m/C Michael Moore, Anita Bryant, Bob Eubanks, Pat Boone; D: Michael Moore; W: Michael Moore; C: Kevin Rafferty, Chris Beaver, John Prusak, Bruce Schermer. VHS, LV, Closed Caption