Big Fat Important Movie (An American Carol) - I love a good political satire (it’s just a shame this isn’t one)

You could be forgiven for thinking that ‘Hollywood’ is pretty ‘left-wing’ in general.  Pretty much every film or TV show does tend to portray right-wing Republicans as the ‘baddies’ and nice, liberal Democrats as the goodies.  I guess there was always going to be a film that would challenge that stereotype.  I’ve got nothing against alternate viewpoints; it’s just a shame they couldn’t do it any better than this.

Firstly, if you don’t know who Michael Moore is (or his work in documentary film-making) you’re going to struggle to ‘get’ most of the jokes here.  He makes documentaries which mainly criticise what he sees as ‘flaws’ with America and the American way of life, not to mention throw in a fair few ‘anti right-wing’ references along the way.  Therefore the central character in this film is ‘Michael Malone’ (subtle, huh?) – a documentary film-maker who basically looks exactly like Michael Moore and shares his liberal sensibilities.  He gets recruited by foreign terrorists to produce an anti-American film for their nefarious purposes.

The film probably could have worked, if it wasn’t for the fact that all the jokes are largely ‘personal.’ Yes, Michael Moore is a large man.  This means that most of the gags are based on his appearance and other problems with his physical appearance.  You start being able to see them coming after a while.

Leslie Nielson his also in this (although not as much as most people would like) and his small cameos are reasonably good.  

I watched this through and I did chuckle a few times.  It’s not as terrible as it could have been.  It’s just that its whole story is based on a political agenda and it gets a little tiring being constantly slapped in the face with the same message.

If you’re ‘ultra liberal’ you’re probably going to hate this film.  If you’re ‘ultra right-wing’ you’ll probably agree with certain aspects of its message, yet still find it not that funny.  However, if you’re left or right wing, as long as you hate Michael Moore, you’ll probably love this.  

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back