An unlikely source of mirth: a documentary about the layoff of 30,000 auto workers from eleven General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan. The Roger of the title is Roger Smith, GM Chairman; the Me is first-time filmmaker Michael Moore, whose Leftist bona fides had been well established in ten years as editor of the Michigan Voice; and the ostensible premise of the film is that Mr. Moore requests the pleasure of Mr. Smith's company for a single day of tooling around Flint and assessing the economic damage. Moore, of course, is no fool, at least no unwitting fool, and this rumply, smart-alecky troublemaker, with a vaguely Andy Rooney-ish whine, knows full well his chances of ever getting to deliver the invitation to the corporate mucky-muck in person. So he makes do, while pretending to wait for a response to his written invitations, with whoever's at hand: P.R. spokespeople ("Let me rephrase that. This is not a plant-closing, it's a loss of one product line") and urban-redevelopment boosters ("How many cities have their own PGA tour event?") and imported cheerleaders of the likes of Miss Michigan, Pat Boone, and Anita Bryant ("Thank God for the sunshine!" -- an attempt at a spiritual perspective that shows off Bryant's well-documented knack for reducing a defensible position to a pile of rubble). Few of these people come off at all well, and it would appear to have been a prudent move by Moore to let statistics (and himself) do most of the talking for the auto workers: else they might become figures of fun, also. This, he plainly feels, is no time to fight fair. And indeed he fights very well. Naiveté, as that ostensible premise of the film demonstrates, can be a useful comic weapon; it can also be a useful comic shield. Even, that is, when Moore's naiveté is not active and calculated naiveté; but is that of incompleteness and incomprehension, it doesn't get in the way of the fun. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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