Wonderfully offbeat film!

Absolutely brilliant

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

With a visually inventive and stimulating film-making style, I was captivated by Michael Moore's debut feature documentary. While it's a truly impressive specimen as far as structuring and camerawork goes, Moore presents a very tinted perspective that doesn't allow any room for the audience to form any of their own opinions about the subject. With his confrontationally ambushing and venomously-undertoned "interviewing" style Moore doesn't really allow anyone else to be heard. On the rare occasion that he does get an honest opposite opinion or valid argument he simply dismisses them by coincidingly matching the segment with pointed satirical imagery or an angry sort of irony. At times he even pleads for you to feel the plight of the laid off autoworkers yet and then is highly judgemental of how they get on with their lives and survive. While I wish the film had presented a more open perspective (or at least a more subtle message) and had been a little more thought provoking, it still held appeal and had me enjoying Moore's radical technique.

This film has aged horribly and phenomenally. In order to expose the total inhumane and non-empathetic attitude of The boss of General Motors, Roger XXX, in 1988, when GM closed eleven factories in the USA, including the one in Flint, Michigan, and then opened eleven factories in Mexico and other foreign countries where labor was cheaper than in the USA, Michael Moore in this film appears today as defending a position that is bringing a whole vision of the world to ruin and chaos.The working class in those days, up to the 1990s and at times even beyond, be it blue collar or white collar, had been educated if not tamed or broken-in and enslaved into the ideology that you had to get a job at 18 or 20 or even 22 and 24, and it was THE ONLY job you'll have all lifelong and you will retire and even die in it. They then stopped learning, stopped improving, stopped being dynamic and athletic. They started getting fat, enjoying hours in front of TV and the satisfying though humdrum routine of a life that was a descent into hell. Then you can imagine the drama if they lost their jobs. It is true the whole system was based on that planting these human plants in permanent places since human beings are perennials as is well known. And you can imagine what this ideology, this life style could produce as for distortion and inhumanity, like sexism and genderism, racism, nationalism, and so many other -isms including rebellion- ism, provocation-ism, jingo-ism (and dingo-ism), antisemitism, anti- intellectualism, etc.-ism. These human beings became chattel, human possessions of the business that exploited them, and pumped them dry of all resources. Came the big recession of 2008-2009 and it luckily produced at first Obama-ism or "Yes-You-Can-ism" and after eight years of not coming out of the hole by going back to the good old days when you were born in any no-matter-which-industry to retire and die in it they moved to Trump-ism and Political-Hollywood-ism. And a millionaire braggart and his band of circus-and-menagerie millionaires were able to capture their attention with fake promises, like reopening the coal mines, which he could do but not with human miners, rather robotized coal-diggers, or reopen the car factories, but not with human blue collar workers like in Mexico where they are cheap but with robotized blue collar workers who are even cheaper than workers in Mexico. What the Chinese are doing because they have to cope with the one child per family policy and replace three or four out-going low qualified workers by one highly qualified worker, that is to say shifting to highly automated and robotized, in one word or acronym AI-ed or should I say AI-zed, industry, administration, commerce etc., just as they shifted from a cash economy to the most virtualized monetary exchanges imaginable on earth, Trump and his acolytes are going to do it in order to even increase some more their profit margins. The millionaire in the White House, and all his millionaire pals, know that but they think that in four years the naïve blind monkeys who elected them will have forgotten the promises and hopefully there will be no inflation, for what it may matter, and hopefully the people will be so drunk with fury that they will start breaking everything and they will be dealt with the National Guard and real bullets. Because, and here Michael Moore shows it so well, cynicism is the first and main characteristic of the "ruling class," capitalistic, elected or not, appointed or just social climbing. Good morning the post-hang-over era and good afternoon the pre- delirium-tremens curse. We only have the leaders we deserve and I must say that the ideology birth-life-death-in-one-job only deserves leaders who are ruling over our toilet habits. And they will certainly not invent like in Brussels the common toilet, serve everyone and all people indifferently. Look at North Carolina.Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

Other than the fact that his presentation of himself as the "Average Guy on the Street" is a little questionable and VERY staged, Roger & Me has a major, major problem if Moore wants it to be taken as a factual documentary. The chronology of the events has been changed.The concept of cause-and-effect is crucial to Roger & Me. One of the defining criteria of a documentary film is the absence of obviously fictional elements. Don't create events, dialog, costumes--and don't manipulate chronology. But that's exactly what he did. When Flint started hemorrhaging jobs, the city did not just stand by and do nothing, they tried to recreate the economy by building the Water Street pavilion, the hotel, and autoworld, attempting to raise tourism money. In the movie, the reverend comes to town for $20k to pray away unemployment, Reagan shows up and his advice is basically to move (wearing a UAW jacket--totally inappropriate for him). Now when Moore comes back to Flint, it's 1986 when the BIG layoffs are happening. It's been intermittent up to this point.In the film these events are presented as a response to the massive layoffs that began in 1986, but Reagan actually came in 1980, the evangelist in 1982, and the tourism plan was in 1985. This is a huge problem for the film and basically disqualifies it as a real documentary because these visits/plans were not a result of the BIG layoffs.These are well-documented, look around a bit, see what you can find. The hotel and Autoworld also went bankrupt before or early on in the layoff cycle, even though they are presented very late in the film.Along the vein of the chronology problem, notice that Moore wants to bring Roger Smith to Flint to see the devastation. The film explains that GM, the richest corporation in the world, closed 11 North American plants. Work went to Mexico. With increased profits, money goes to shareholders. They then invest in high tech weaponry. Before this, they were the most profitable corporation in the history of mankind, but this decision is made to increase the profit margin further (needlessly, the film asserts).So here's my point about that paragraph. They spend 28 seconds on these highly important facts. Now notice that they spend about 5-10 minutes on Miss America, and another 5 or so minutes on the crazy rabbit lady, simply because people will get a kick out of that stuff. That's also a big part of what I'm talking about. How can you discuss complex global economics in 28 seconds? Left out are the facts that there was a significant recession at the time, lots of unemployment, and lots of people buying imports which were cheaper and more efficient with the gas crisis. In order for plants to close, contracts had to be dissolved and the UAW played a huge role in this. This is pertinent information that people need to know if they are to be educated on this subject. Yet Michael Moore is harder on Miss America than on the UAW. He displays some condescension and ambush journalism tactics like with the wealthy old ladies at the golf course.You see, I'm not saying he's lying, I'm saying he's twisting and distorting. The whole thing is just an entertaining film designed to fill theater seats. It's not pure documentary.And like I said, Michael Moore is not just an average blue-collar "one-of-the-guys" type of guy, he's a media giant (admittedly this was not AS true in 1989, but he was still big). Putting on the baseball cap and jeans, not lighting anything, and walking in the front door of GM to try to get an interview with Roger Smith is totally absurd. They were very conscious decisions and very trite ways to get some entertaining footage.Even if you can somehow dismiss those problems with Roger & Me, I have one that's a lot harder to deal with. This film was made on bad faith. He wants to present himself as the intrepid "Joe Plainfolks" going on a noble quest to bring Smith to Flint and force him to own up to the consequences of his decision. This goal was abandoned in favor of making a comedy. Whatever the serious, human, and compelling issues motivated Roger & Me were thrown out the window in favor of making a series of SNL skits.Apparently Roger & Me is not meant to be seen as pure documentary, but as advocacy and partisan journalism, it's just that it's not marketed that way. Sadly, and this is coming from someone who mostly agrees with Moore's opinions, I have to call 'BS' on this film.

As a prototypical youngest child I have an affinity for feather-ruffling and rabble-rousing. As such, I love these types of movies hence the 8-star rating. Still, this film bothered me in a few ways; the primary one is the basic question of exactly what do corporations owe their employees? Tastes change, technology changes, and not surprisingly business tactics change. I am not sure if Moore or the employees stated this, but what exactly did they want/expect? Of course they wanted to retain their jobs but as I understand it the owners of corporations are looking for increased profits. Cutting costs are one way to do that. One way GM found to cut costs was to manufacture abroad. So, why wouldn't GM do that? Due to employee loyalty? I'm not sure a corporation can exist if employee loyalty comes before profits. I think Moore should have also gone after primary stockholders/owners as well.As I watched, I had a similar thought that I had to consider the source and remember that Moore is a business man and being controversial sells tickets. I had that same feeling watching Sicko. It's like Moore's documentaries outcomes are predefined and he will see to it that it turns out that way. I thought Moore's asking those presumably rich people(and Miss Mich) their impromptu thoughts on the situation was unfair. I would welcome more intelligent debate where both sides are given some time to prepare. Why Roger didn't talk to Moore surprised me maybe Moore liked it that way. After all, did Moore truly do all he could to get an interview? I will bet you this. If on hiring day, every employee was informed that in the future GM may adopt tactics that would result in job losses, but that if this occurred laid-off employees might receive a severance package, the vast majority would still have taken the job regardless of these known pitfalls.To me, going to work for a corporation is a buyer-beware situation. As employees we need to maximize our time there. Take your vacations, max out your 401K, take advantage of tuition assistance, get physicals, and watch the behaviors of those successful counterparts who always seem to be in the right place at the right time. Also, if corporations worry you, don't work for them, go to work for a private firm but don't get there and complain about all the benefits your buddies at Verizon (or wherever) are getting.On a side note (perhaps somewhat relevant considering all the layoffs we're experiencing), we Americans need to start living more practically. If you make $50K/year live like you make $43K. If you participate in a 401K plan remember that a 401K is not a rainy-day account, it is a retirement plan. If you do not need a 2000sqft home, don't buy one. Cars and kids don't need their own bedrooms. Smaller homes encourage us to get out of the house which is not a bad thing. While having your own bathroom is convenient, it is so for about 30 minutes/day: SHARE them.Gas prices fluctuate. If you find yourself stressing about that, buy a smaller car and drive less....it can be done. Instead of packing up the bikes and kids and driving them to a bike trail, ride your bikes to the store, bank, video store, zoo, etc.... Also, smaller cars get you from point A to point B exactly like big cars do...only cheaper. While driving smaller, efficient vehicles is not considered cool is beyond me, this means the driver is smart and may have more money to spend...on you. This is not to say that you shouldn't have a comfy car....the problem is when people pull out food-stamps then hop into a brand new Maxima or Escalade.