Roger and Me

Roger and Me (1989)

--Michael Moore

Documentary.

I know that Michael Moore is widely hated-ish by both "liberals" and "conservatives," and I also am somewhat sceptical about him as I am with everyone who has such strong convictions (even myself, you should hear the various voices arguing within my head sometimes, it's scary haha), but I still don't really know exactly what is factually incorrect with his films or how they aren't reflective of the truth or at least subjective truth as seen through the eyes of Moore himself. And since I haven't really seen anyone prove him wrong (because he isn't?) I'm just going to assume that he's more or less a good guy who happens to make awesome documentaries about stuff that I actually, *shock* *shock*, really care about and think that others need to care about too (yeah, I said it, you should care about what Michael Moore cares about). I'm sorry that maybe he's overweight and loud and in-your-face about things, but I don't really have a problem with that. And while it's become obvious that I could just go on and on with this, I'm going to end the disclaimer and move to the review.

This film is from the '80's! I didn't actually even notice that till I saw what everyone was wearing and how Moore had a mullet and I was like "what is up with the fashion?" Hahaha, you'll see what I mean if you see this film. It's great just for that. Okay, it's basically about the auto industry, specifically the place of GM as the heart of industry in Moore's hometown Flint, Michigan. GM gets a new CEO, the "Roger" in the title, who shuts down a bunch of plants and lays off a bunch of people, and Flint is hit really hard by this since, as is shown in the film, basically everyone worked there. So Moore would like to interview Roger about this and ask him "hey, what's up?" but he's turned down again and again, so he gets to interview everyone and their crazy rabbit-killing second cousins instead! Seriously, there's rabbit killing in this film, I was really shocked and didn't understand what was happening--why is that woman hitting her rabbit over the head with that pipe? Ohhhhhhhhhh, crappppp. Just be aware of that, I guess.

Anyway, Moore interviews a lot of other people, like a lobbyist, Bob Eubanks, other celebrities (a cheap celebrity theater is opened at discounted prices for all of the people who get laid off), and my favourite, the tourism director for Flint, Michigan. Wow, he was dumb. Anyway, no one who has any money really cares about what happens in Flint and crime keeps rising and people keep moving because there are no jobs! This movie is probably especially pertinent now that three US automakers are all like "crap, we've wasted our money on private jets and billion-dollar CEO bonus and now we don't have any left for cars". Yeah, if they all fail there are going to be a lot more Flint-like towns out there. He also spends awhile following around someone who evicts people and it's really sad. Yeah, lots of foreclosed homes in Flint too.

That's pretty much all I have to say about this film. It was good, it was informative, down with corporations, they are not people, people are the only people, let's all start socialist farming communes!