Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Roger & Me is Michael Moore's first documentary feature film. It's more personal than his other films in that it focuses on his hometown of Flint, Michigan. More specifically on the aftermath of the closure of the General Motors plant that was based there, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs and subsequently led to a steep decline of Flint itself. The town developed such a poverty and crime problem that it was named as 'the worst place to live in America'.It's a blackly comic work which constantly contrasts the people afflicted by the upheaval with the attitude of the town's elite. It also takes a dim view of GM itself and its chairman Roger Smith in particular. The narrative thrust of the film sees Moore pursue Smith to try and get a face-to-face interview. Needless to say, he is successful in this endeavour in only an extremely limited way, only getting a very brief exchange late on in proceedings. Moore's approach to this and the film in general is typically manipulative though, setting up situations where he knows he will be rebuffed and including some unfair interview snippets with some quite innocent people, making them look stupid with editing for cheap laughs. When I viewed Moore's work for the first time, this sort of stuff didn't very much concern me but now I find it a little too underhand for my liking.Having said all this, if you accept that documentaries tend to be biased to some degree, I have to acknowledge that Moore does at the very least shine a light on a situation which otherwise would have been long forgotten by the majority of people by now and does give some disenfranchised folks a platform of sorts. And he is a skilled film-maker so his documentaries certainly are dynamic and entertaining which does help in getting a point across more effectively than a more sober treatment would. Roger & Me may be an attack on corporate America but it's often the smaller, stranger details that remain with you, such as the segment about the slightly unhinged lady who breeds and kills rabbits in her back yard in order to survive. On the whole, this film has all of the same negatives that all of Moore's subsequent work has, yet like those too it hammers home its point in an entertaining enough manner to remain in the memory and it occasionally hits upon an interesting truth every so often.

For a beautiful representation of the divide between the have and have nots of this world, you cant go past 'Roger & Me'. Though quite dated in the aesthetics department, this 1988 doco by master left wing film maker 'Michael Moore', remains a poignant vision of greed and destruction of a town where the major industry (General Motors - who despite record profits up to then decided to close 11 U.S factories country wide & relocate them to Mexico paying the Mexican workers 70 cents / hr,) has shut up shop leaving 13,000 'Flint' locals out of a work. The flow on effect is catastrophic on the working class leaving many destitute fighting poverty and the eviction crew (evicting dozens of people a day, piling their belongings on the nature strip!), while they are unable to find further employment due to many of the town's businesses folding. No incomes means no spending, no spending means failed business. No businesses, means no jobs, no job no in come....well you get the picture. What is greatly insightful is the absolute ignorance the 'Wealthy' display of the troubles in their town, while playing a round of golf and discussing how many of the workers "Just don't want to work"!!!! Just goes to prove things don't change in society, the poor continue to get shafted & the rich are on the whole, selfish, in-sightless, arrogant pricks! I love the smooth over job by G.M, building a music hall and providing performances by crooner Pat Boone & other cabaret stars for half price for those out of work! Having the audacity to import a 'major' preacher to blow smoke up the population's collective arse. Just shows the contempt this company holds and the lengths it will go to distract them from the reality of their predicament! The G.M C.E.O chase is on in true 'Moore' fashion, his mission, a few answers and maybe a bit of interrogation. Looks like he'll have to look beyond his multi million dollar estate,the yacht or golf club!General motors did a damn fine job of creating this apocalyptic landscape for the camera to document and Michael does a fine job of showing the bleakness and giving the viewer an insight of the people's painful predicament.

By now, most everyone in American is familiar with the stories of Enron, Worldcom, and other corporations that cooked the books, made some rich, and left the workers and investors holding the bag. Most of us know that outsourcing is depressing wages and has destroyed the middle class in American, leaving us a nation of rich and poor. But this documentary slaps us in the face with graphic depiction of one city that has borne the brunt of corporate greed and the maximization of profits.This is the one that started Michael Moore on his career as a multi-award winning writer and director. It, like his other films uses humor and satire to show the slimy underbelly of American corporate practice, and the incestuous relationship between corporations and American politicians. Eisenhower warned us, but even he did not have a real idea of how powerful these corporations would become.

Flint is small town that was for many years a extension to General Motors factory. One morning boss of Genergal Motor – Roger Smith woke up and discover the fact that closing the factory and fire of 30,000 people can make better business than carry on with production, despite the fact that factory didn't bring any losses."Roger and Me" is document where Michael Moore report the slow but systematic fall of his hometown because of Roger Smith decision. Moore just want one thing – bring Roger Smith to the town, so he can see with his own eyes the fallout. I wont spoiler, let me just say the one of last scene of this movie is very eerie and surreal.This is very interesting document, when every reported thing is scary, curious and funny. My favorite moment is interview with women breeding rabbits (for pets, and for meat), but all of this encounters with Flint's peasants are at least informative. Yeah, it's a manipulation by Moore like always (I hate his Fahrenheit because of that), but here he selected and arranged the moment in very powerful way. The situation is real, and the horror of it its more then real, when we see this hopeless, not very bright people who where just because of one man decision put on the highway to hell.And of course this movie is all about Moore. He is everywhere, non stop commenting, but the god-crusader from last scene of "Bowling for columbine" (Heston) is no where near here, and that's a good thing. This movie is just a well aimed shot, a punk-rock scream for a social injustice. This is art for document with power to stir up emotion and show people ugly things just the way they are: evictions, parades, idiotic city decision – ignorance, foolishness, powerlessness – its all powerful evil, and the last scene with very sad Christmas Carol its surreal.