He (President Bush) did what any of us would do when times got tough, he went on vacation.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is like much of Michael Moore's work for me - hit and miss. Some parts were incredibly powerful, and others kind of fell flat. Overall it was an excellent movie, but I think this one was in desperate need of a well defined thesis.

Moore sort of stumbles around. He spends the first part of the movie talking about Bush's failed business ventures, his ties with the Saudi's (especially the bin Laudens) and various other shady connections between Bush, Bush Sr, various cabinet members, Cheney, businesses and Saudi Arabia. This is all interesting, but it's the kind of thing that doesn't add up. Moore presents all these things, and sort of hints at badness, but doesn't put anything in perspective or comment on any larger significance. He leaves that to the viewer, but that's dangerous in this case. The assertions are quite inflamatory, and the sense is the movie is trying to push you to larger conclusions - but since the movie doesn't offer those conclusions itself I fear they aren't warranted. It almost feels like Moore is stretching enough where he's at, and would like to offer larger conclusions, but knows his evidence doesn't support them. Either way, at the very least it's a damning list of instances of blatant cronyism.

Then he shifts gears to the Iraqi war. He spends some time talking about how the rational for the war was invalid. This part is shorter, since he's mostly just setting up part two where he shows us some of the human costs of war.

We get to go to Iraq and see some horrofic images from over there. But where Moore really scores is when he spends lots of time with people here at home. He intersperces pieces showing some Flint high school kids talking about how there aren't a lot of good options but the military with a pair of Marine recruiters doing some high pressure sales on kids at the local run down mall (they skipped the town's nice mall to go to a place where the kids would have fewer life options.) But his best moments are spent with a family who lost a son in the war. This is a reminder that the war continues, and has a very real cost here. It reminds us that we must be absolutely sure war is the only reasonable option, the costs are too high to use any other measure.

Over all I had three favorite moments. There were lots of scenes of life appearing relatively normal and happy in Iraq in March of 2003 - just before we started bombing them and making like not relatively normal or happy. Then there were two great voiceover sequences in the end. In the first Moore talks about how he's always been amazed that the people who have been given the least by this country (aka, the poor) have some of the strongest pride in the US and are the first to step up to defend it, while they are being sent to war by people in a whole different class. Then he ends the movie with a long quote from 1984.

I don't think this is the masterpiece some say it is (it would have been with a solid thesis) but I liked it and overall got depressed again at the state of the world. Of course with me, Moore is preaching to the choir.

Side note: there were several people standing outside the theater doing voter registration. Who ever thought of that deserves a bonus.

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