Where to Invade Next

It has become so easy and so right to blame Michael Moore for everything annoying about the contemporary state of activist documentaries that his skill as an entertainer often gets overlooked. One good belly laugh from Moore is worth a million paranoid whispers from Alex Gibney and Eugene Jarecki. Just try to watch any one of the neoconservative hit piece/rip-off documentaries produced in the last dozen years, and you’ll realize how difficult it is to do what Moore does. His first theatrical release in six years, Where to Invade Next puts Moore back in high-concept territory, as he “invades” foreign countries to steal their ideas for social change, such as Finnish school reforms and Portuguese drug policies. The arguments are simplistic but effective, and while this entertaining film probably won’t change many people’s minds about the need for social liberalism, that’s a ridiculous standard for any work of art. D.B.