The Big One [DVD]

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A brazen mixture of stand-up comedy, political commentary, CEO confrontations, and shenanigans with Random House tour escorts, Michael Moore's The Big One follows his Midwest book tour to promote Downsize This. One of his Milwaukee tour escorts explains that medium-sized cities in the Midwest tend not to attract tours by the self-important celebrities of the coasts; instead, they attract "more thoughtful authors like Michael". His kind of thoughtfulness evokes both laughter at, and disgust with, corporate America. To be sure, there is a certain naiveté in Moore's pro-worker take on corporate and political America--his half-serious plan for a Nike shoe factory in Flint, Michigan, makes as much business sense as coal mining on Maui--but he gives voice to well-reasoned arguments that would otherwise have been lost amid Clinton-era corporate downsizing and reliance on "temporary" employees. In cities such as Des Moines, Minneapolis, St Louis and Portland, The Big One juxtaposes both Moore's lighthearted-sounding but deeply biting humour when speaking before bookstore patrons, and painful-to-watch confrontations with security personnel at companies such as Procter & Gamble and PayDay. (Future targets of Moore's style of journalism could take note of Nike CEO Phil Knight's fairly effective approach as Moore calls him to task on Nike's Indonesian labour.) Moore speaks clandestinely with Borders employees organising a union; a woman laid off from Ford attends Moore's Rockford, Illinois bookstore visit the same day. Though slow in spots and frustrating, if not depressing, in others, this follow up to Roger and Me is intensely funny most of the time. --Erik Macki