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Latest round-up of opinions about “Captain Mike Across America”

The TIFF festival has come and gone, and nearly all of the reviews of Moore newest film seem to be in. I’ve taken the latest sampling from both professional critics and personal blog accounts and collected them here for your perusal. Personally, I think the compiled end result of all these reviews is utterly fascinating.

Well, the critics continue to pan “Captain Mike” as if it were the plague itself. Honestly, I’ve seen perhaps one or two reviews that were neutral at best from the professional critics’ circle. The newest review from Variety is particularly scathing:

One could easily carve an interesting hour-long docu out of “Captain Mike Across America,” Michael Moore’s ungainly account of his “Slacker Uprising” campaign to encourage young people to vote for John Kerry—and, more importantly, against George W. Bush—during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In its current form, however, this repetitious and self-indulgent hodgepodge comes across as a nostalgia-drenched vanity project, with far too much footage of various celebs at assorted gatherings introing Moore as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Theatrical potential is slim, but grassroots circulation of DVDs might prove useful in get-out-the-vote drives for 2008.

Ouch. GreenCine Daily offers a plethora of snippets of reviews from a whole bunch of sources, saving me the trouble of quoting all of them. I highly encourage you to click the link and read through the absolutely searing reviews collected here, but here are a couple of new ones I found highly amusing:

“Why did Moore feel that this material needed to be so tediously regurgitated?” asks Ben Kenigsberg at Time Out Chicago. “Rather than inspiring his audience to action, Captain Mike does little other than call attention to the arrogance of the man who made it.”

“The single largest-scale vanity project since Caligula,” says the Reeler’s ST VanAirsdale.

Again… OUCH.

In contrast, bloggers have been incredibly quiet about “Captain Mike” and the critics response to it. Not many seem to want to discuss the film or its reception, and those that do are still split very much down the middle, with some continuing their defensive of Moore and others panning the project. The latest round seem to be trying to put a positive spin on things, either by focusing on the good parts of the film or by diverting the subject to Moore and politics.

The blog at Toronto Screen Shots is trying to be as positive about the film as possible:

Michael Moore’s latest film received a standing ovation at the Ryerson Theatre last Friday.

Republicans will see his latest work as a propaganda film and some Canadians will call it a complete pile of rubbish. Democrats will love the film and see it as the truth that has been suppressed by the media. This Canadian found it very entertaining…

Love him or hate him, his films are entertaining. The audience at Ryerson couldn’t get enough of his stories. The film will have a limited theatrical release in North America according to Harvey Weinstein who was in the audience. Following that will be a DVD release which will include a lot of extra footage and a show Moore did in London shortly after 9/11. My guess is that all of this will come out next year just before the election (depending on how the Democrats are doing in the polls).

Here’s Balanced Opinions’ positive spin on both Moore and “Captain Mike” - note how quickly the discussion of the film turns into a political debate about Moore’s electoral probability:

The folk who urge a write-in vote for Gore have already picked a Vice-Presidential candidate for him - someone who has equal standing as a tribune of the people. They’ve chosen Michael Moore as his running mate.

Well - this is particularly bad timing. Captain Mike Across America has just universally been hailed as crap - I think “self-praising” and “self-infatuated” were the nicest things the TIFF reviewers could say. In the process, he jumps all over students for not having turned out to vote Bush out in 2004. Well, the so-called youth vote, “slackers” as Moore calls them, never turns out. Following and voting elections interferes with drinking and what youth voters insist on calling fucking. (So do courses; that’s why you can study video games or blogging.) There’s the other safe Gore bloc shot - students. They’d never go for Moore now.

I think it’s safe to call this one now. As it currently stands after it TIFF debut, the critical reviews are positively SCATHING. Virtually one has anything even remotely nice to say about “Captain Mike”, and I can say I haven’t seen a movie panned this badly since “Snakes on a Plane”. Interestingly, Moore’s fans are NOT coming to his defense. Very few bloggers had much to say about “Captain Mike”, and those reviews/opinions were extraordinarily mixed. Only a few were truly positive and almost no one defended him outright. It seems that only the few very faithful die-hard Moore fans liked this film, leaving the rest of the viewing populace scratching their heads wondering what the hell this film was supposed to accomplish. I would call the critical review of “Captain Mike” as 95% very against the film and the blogger/fan reaction as about 50% against the film. If there are more fans out there who liked this film, they certainly aren’t talking about it.

I am astounded at the incredible negativity surrounding this project. Moore and Weinstein promised a limited US theatrical release which may prove problematic given the incredible backlash against the film. I can’t help but wonder how Moore is feeling about these reviews. Is he taking any of this criticism seriously? Will he re-edit the film if it does come out in the US? Will he be able to brush away such harsh reactions to his work or will his anger get the best of him?

I will of course continue to report and update you all on the progress of “Captain Mike” and any further plans or reactions that occur in the future. Stay tuned… ;)

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