Capitalism: A Love Story

If Michael Moore’s tiresome, patronizing and greasily abbreviated new film teaches us one thing about the global financial crisis, it is that the stunt-doc gold standard has become obsolete. Moore’s formerly unique brand of cloddish precocity may have expanded the horizons of nonfiction moviemaking, but by now it doesn’t seem at all constructive. Lacking discipline, commitment and, for that matter, a viable, historically vetted alternative to capitalism, Capitalism crams many scraps of artillery into one big cannon of a movie with one too-big target. Moore’s rage at powerful perpetrators of criminal greed is as true as his sympathetic ear for their powerless victims, but he courts falsity with a heap of standard-issue throwaway jokes, stock-footage gimmicks and suggestive cuts—not to mention the dispiriting sense that he’s just running through his same old shtick from 20 years ago. Well, at least he’s still got a good way to make a buck.