Where To Invade Next

You know what to expect from a Michael Moore documentary by now and there’s not a lot in Where To Invade Next, his first since 2009's Capitalism: A Love Story, that messes with the formula. While the idea is a little flimsy and the title is misleading (it's not a critique of his country's warmongering foreign policy) this turns out to be his most optimistic outing to date.

The Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 director sets about 'invading' European countries, 'stealing' their best ideas and hightailing it back to America in the hope that Washington will implement them. Looking a lot more frail than usual, Moore's first stop is Italy and their idea of paid vacations (gasp), before moving on to France for a Jamie Oliver-esque expose of school dinners (lamb skewers over couscous for seven-year-olds compared to pizza and Sloppy Joes at home). Then it's on to Finland and its art-loving education system and Slovenia’s policy of no Third Level fees. There’s also Germany's universal health care (including a three week stay at a spa) and the employee-friendly company laws. He swings by Norway too and checks out the humane prison system.

It’s when he moves into Tunisia and Iceland, exploring the former's newfound women's rights movement and the latter's implementation of gender equality on the boards of banks and businesses, that Where To Invade Next hints at the documentary it could have been. There's also a short dalliance into murkier territory when he states that every day in every German school students are taught about the holocaust and that his own country should explore its own terrible history re Native Americans and horrors doled out to people of colour. Either one of these ideas would have made for a stronger documentary but Moore frustratingly only touches on them. Perhaps next time.

What will infuriate his detractors is once again Moore tends to oversimplify any given situation (the lax drug laws of Lisbon will most definitely curtail drug use; the well-to-do Italian couple raving about paid holidays are described as working class!) and, like in 2007's Sicko, paints each and every country he visits as a social paradise full of happy people. He interviews those only who back up his points and ideas; Moore has always been as biased as his bete noir, Fox News.

But despite the flaws in approach, Moore is determined to highlight what is rotten at the core of the American Dream and he does so in an entertaining fashion that’s very accessible and with no little black humour. They are difficult balls to juggle.