Film Review: "Where to Invade Next" (2016).

"Michael Moore's most dangerous comedy." This is Where to Invade Next. This documentary film written, co-produced, and directed by Michael Moore. Moore visits various countries to examine how Europeans view work, education, health care, sex, equality, and other issues. From cafeteria food to sex ed, Moore looks at the benefits of schooling in France, Finland and Slovenia. In Italy, he marvels at how workers enjoy reasonable hours and generous vacation time. In Portugal, Moore notes the effects of the decriminalization of drugs. Through his travels, we discover just how different America is from the rest of the world.

Six years have past since the release of Moore's last documentary Capitalism: A Love Story (2009). According to Moore, the film was produced in secret. It was shot with a small crew and production took place on three continents. In addition, not a single frame of his documentary is shot on location in the USA.

Driven by Michael Moore’s sincere humanism, Where to Invade Next is a devastating and convincing, and very entertaining documentary about the state of America’s policies. Moore lets very articulate average non-Americans tell their personal stories of their country’s policies and philosophies. Moore criticizes America for their inability and, in some cases, their unwillingness to change their mindset of being "the greatest country in the world." The film truly reveals that Moore is still an auteur. It is a very strong and very honest film about a nation that’s totally blind and consumed in its ways that it fails to see its fundamental flaws which makes other nations around the world petty them. The film is wildly comic while tearing apart America’s policies. If other countries can provide their people with whatever they provide, why can’t America? If they can’t, who are they? Though the focus occasionally strays, the film emerges as a fascinating exploration and powerful indictment of a pressing national problem. This is Moore’s biggest, best, and most impassioned work. The film is a quieter, more focused and less feral beast than its predecessor, Capitalism: A Love Story, but that’s not saying much. One may quibble with Mr. Moore's anecdotal oversimplifications and his xenophilic fantasies, but he has struck a socio-psychic nerve in the American geo-political landscape, generating a feeling of outrage that seems to be reverberating in every theatre. This is the essential problem the film addresses, in an eruption that’s the most unruly and uncategorizable part of the whole movie, and the most unmistakably heartfelt. You want the truth? Moore can handle the truth. The film offers still plenty to get filed up about, but the firebrand ire of Capitalism: A Love Story seems to have mellowed a little. Though his politics have always been unmistakably left, Moore’s targets nowadays are almost exclusively the powerful and his recent work is fuelled by optimism rather than cynicism. More humble than Capitalism: A Love Story, and as enthralling as Sicko (2007), the film is another target hit square on the nose for America’s premier documentalist.

Simon says Where to Invade Next receives: