Like millions of others, I lined up this weekend to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Charles Pierce summarizes my opinion pretty closely:
Frankly, as a movie qua movie, I thought the thing was kind of a hash. My eyes glazed at the endless Bush-Carlyle-Harken-Saudis-Hallburton segment at the beginning, and I’d heard most of it before. The “Bonanza” thing was really dumb — and I mean FILM-SCHOOL dumb — and it used the wrong theme music, besides. However, he does make up for that with a music cue during C-Plus Augustus’s aircraft-carrier stunt that put me on the floor.
That having been said, the good stuff is really good. The American soldiers are strikingly eloquent, both here and Over There, and anybody who accuses Moore of undermining Our Troops has to argue that he does so partly by giving the grunts a voice. The Senate sellout of the outraged members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the wake of the 2000 election scam should make Tom Daschle and Al Gore lock themselves in a closet for a month. (Not one Democratic senator would stand with John Lewis?)
I wish, in fact, that Moore had cut most of the cheap Bush jokes and focused his attention, instead, on only Iraq and the American military. The last hour of Fahrenheit 9/11 is fantastic; I just wish it were cut into a film that wouldn’t alienate so many Bush voters.