Don't listen to the negative reviews

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

What does one do when one makes a bucket load of money from a movie were you whinge and whine about how progress has destroyed your home town, and you spend an hour and a half fictitiously chasing the CEO of a major corporation and make it appear on camera that he does not want to talk to you? - More of the same.Basically this film is about a book tour where Michael Moore travels across the United States holding signings and conferences about a book that he wrote called Downsize Me, and spends all of his time criticising Corporate America. Now don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of criticising corporate America because the nature of the system which is based on greed and on lining the pockets of a minority to the expense of the majority is something that needs to be criticised – it is just that I don't like it when Micheal Moore does it because it is becoming clear that the only reason he is doing it is because people pay him money to watch his movies and to read his books.The question that I have is what does Michael Moore do with all the money that he makes from these enterprises? I know I won't be able to ask him because he doesn't like to give interviews in exactly the same way that the CEOs he chases allegedly don't like to give interviews. I suspect the reason that he doesn't like to give interviews, and the reason that CEOs don't like to give interviews to him, is because they do not trust him and they do not know how he is going to manipulate the stock footage that has been taken of those interviews to his own advantage.Anyway, the whole idea of downsizing and moving to Mexico (or other developing countries) is a double edged sword. Manufacturing in America (and in Australia) is a dying industry because it is much cheaper to move it overseas. Further, the costs of setting up factories are so much cheaper because the laws that surround workplace rights and health and safety do not exist, and without tariffs, companies are simply going to behave like water, and that is move to where it is cheapest. Personally I do not like it, but that is the way it is happening. Basically in the modern democracy the unskilled labour is moving to the service industry, and skilled labour is going to a knowledge base (though workers in the construction industry are still needed because you simply cannot off shore them).Once again, it is difficult to tell what is true and what has been manipulated in this film. For instance, it is quite clear that the interview with Phil Knight has been edited to bits to simply show us that he does not care about the conditions of the workers in Indonesia, and that he does not want to open factories in the United States because people in the United States do not want to make shoes. However Knight is right when he says that people who are unemployed will say they want to do any job, yet it is also true that it is so much cheaper to employ people in Indonesia and import the shoes than to pay people in the United States to do it. Unfortunately, it is not necessarily the CEOs and executives that are doing this but the super funds and managed investments that are forcing the companies to do this because they want their returns and us, the people who hold the shares and who have financial stakes in those funds what our returns as well.

Michael Moore's second film is a little more accessible than the original, but at least he takes on the private sector with the same vigor he showed in the first film. Often times dragging, the big moment in this film is Moore's interview with NIKE founder Phil Knight. Not only is this part shocking, it redeems a film that lags in some spots. A solid follow-up to Moore's first film and his television show TV Nation.

Michael Moore's latest documentary focuses on his new book and more assorted attacks on corporations which he deems as inferior or greedy. Although it is somewhat interesting, it is nowhere near as important as 1989's "Roger & Me", which was strongly valid in argument. (When GM CEO Roger Smith laid off thousands of workers just for cheap labor in Mexico, it was probably one of the most dispicable things anyone with four limbs has done.) But the bad timing is nowhere near severe as the hypocrisy. For example, shortly before the messy 2000 Presidential election, Salon magazine surfaced Ralph Nader's 1999 tax returns revealing that he owns a mutual fund with stocks in Walmart, The Gap and an affiliate of Halliburton Oil (all of which came under fierce attack from the Moore/Nader team) This crusade courtesy of the Naderites may have erroneously lead to the wrong guy being in office, and the Moore/Nader team have taken no responsiblity to their actions, or the hypocrisy which surfaced when the Green Party candidate's stocks appeared. This just goes to show that investigative commentary can lead to contradictions and often diminish credibility in argument.

Michael may be pilloried by the Conservative establishment as a hypocrite, by the fact remains he is one of the most eloquent champions of the American working class. The Big one is just one in a long line of his documentaries that highlight the gross corruption that exists within the American Corporate culture, so much of which has permeated the rest of the world. He makes you laugh at the bad guys, which in itself cannot be a bad thing.