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Bowling for Heston
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Apr 6, 2008
57
of
86 people found this review helpful
In truth, this is the most provocative film I've seen in the last year. I can't stop thinking or talking about some of its eye-opening revelations: among them, the unassuming brilliance of Marilyn Manson in his commentary on the struggles of youth; and the fact that Canada has more personal firearms, per capita, than the U.S., but its citizens mysteriously avoid annihilating each other. Moore's exposure of television news media for the sensationalist, predatory ghouls they are, using various methods, is the wittiest and clearest of his points: a white-collar sendup of "Cops," where police wrestle unscrupulous accounting executives to the ground, glows with comic energy, as does a clever analogy drawn, using archive footage, between TV news howling about "aggressive" Africanized bees and fear-mongering about African-Americans themselves. Where Moore becomes annoyingly self-congratulatory and dull is during his extemporaneous and pointless descents upon celebrities: around five useless minutes are spent trying to get Dick Clark to comment on his investment in a restaurant chain that (surprise, like all of them) pays its workers low wages. Moore then bullies the decrepit Charlton Heston into an awkward interview, in which all that's revealed is that Heston's gun-rights crusades are primarily about protecting his house from invasions of the Brown Horde. (Duh.) Moore's attempts to wrench pity from Heston over the shooting death of a Michigan first-grader are clumsy, maudlin and transparently self-serving, like an earlier scene where he theatrically comforts the principal of the little girl's school. However, when Moore is not intentionally trotting out pathos and trying to convince audiences what a sympathetic mensch he is, he's an extremely effective and persuasive political humorist. The History of America cartoon, courtesy of "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is worth the price of admission by itself. |
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