This film has aged horribly and phenomenally. In order to expose the total inhumane and non-empathetic attitude of The boss of General Motors, Roger XXX, in 1988, when GM closed eleven factories in the USA, including the one in Flint, Michigan, and then opened eleven factories in Mexico and other foreign countries where labor was cheaper than in the USA, Michael Moore in this film appears today as defending a position that is bringing a whole vision of the world to ruin and chaos.The working class in those days, up to the 1990s and at times even beyond, be it blue collar or white collar, had been educated if not tamed or broken-in and enslaved into the ideology that you had to get a job at 18 or 20 or even 22 and 24, and it was THE ONLY job you'll have all lifelong and you will retire and even die in it. They then stopped learning, stopped improving, stopped being dynamic and athletic. They started getting fat, enjoying hours in front of TV and the satisfying though humdrum routine of a life that was a descent into hell. Then you can imagine the drama if they lost their jobs. It is true the whole system was based on that planting these human plants in permanent places since human beings are perennials as is well known. And you can imagine what this ideology, this life style could produce as for distortion and inhumanity, like sexism and genderism, racism, nationalism, and so many other -isms including rebellion- ism, provocation-ism, jingo-ism (and dingo-ism), antisemitism, anti- intellectualism, etc.-ism. These human beings became chattel, human possessions of the business that exploited them, and pumped them dry of all resources. Came the big recession of 2008-2009 and it luckily produced at first Obama-ism or "Yes-You-Can-ism" and after eight years of not coming out of the hole by going back to the good old days when you were born in any no-matter-which-industry to retire and die in it they moved to Trump-ism and Political-Hollywood-ism. And a millionaire braggart and his band of circus-and-menagerie millionaires were able to capture their attention with fake promises, like reopening the coal mines, which he could do but not with human miners, rather robotized coal-diggers, or reopen the car factories, but not with human blue collar workers like in Mexico where they are cheap but with robotized blue collar workers who are even cheaper than workers in Mexico. What the Chinese are doing because they have to cope with the one child per family policy and replace three or four out-going low qualified workers by one highly qualified worker, that is to say shifting to highly automated and robotized, in one word or acronym AI-ed or should I say AI-zed, industry, administration, commerce etc., just as they shifted from a cash economy to the most virtualized monetary exchanges imaginable on earth, Trump and his acolytes are going to do it in order to even increase some more their profit margins. The millionaire in the White House, and all his millionaire pals, know that but they think that in four years the naïve blind monkeys who elected them will have forgotten the promises and hopefully there will be no inflation, for what it may matter, and hopefully the people will be so drunk with fury that they will start breaking everything and they will be dealt with the National Guard and real bullets. Because, and here Michael Moore shows it so well, cynicism is the first and main characteristic of the "ruling class," capitalistic, elected or not, appointed or just social climbing. Good morning the post-hang-over era and good afternoon the pre- delirium-tremens curse. We only have the leaders we deserve and I must say that the ideology birth-life-death-in-one-job only deserves leaders who are ruling over our toilet habits. And they will certainly not invent like in Brussels the common toilet, serve everyone and all people indifferently. Look at North Carolina.Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

Other than the fact that his presentation of himself as the "Average Guy on the Street" is a little questionable and VERY staged, Roger & Me has a major, major problem if Moore wants it to be taken as a factual documentary. The chronology of the events has been changed.The concept of cause-and-effect is crucial to Roger & Me. One of the defining criteria of a documentary film is the absence of obviously fictional elements. Don't create events, dialog, costumes--and don't manipulate chronology. But that's exactly what he did. When Flint started hemorrhaging jobs, the city did not just stand by and do nothing, they tried to recreate the economy by building the Water Street pavilion, the hotel, and autoworld, attempting to raise tourism money. In the movie, the reverend comes to town for $20k to pray away unemployment, Reagan shows up and his advice is basically to move (wearing a UAW jacket--totally inappropriate for him). Now when Moore comes back to Flint, it's 1986 when the BIG layoffs are happening. It's been intermittent up to this point.In the film these events are presented as a response to the massive layoffs that began in 1986, but Reagan actually came in 1980, the evangelist in 1982, and the tourism plan was in 1985. This is a huge problem for the film and basically disqualifies it as a real documentary because these visits/plans were not a result of the BIG layoffs.These are well-documented, look around a bit, see what you can find. The hotel and Autoworld also went bankrupt before or early on in the layoff cycle, even though they are presented very late in the film.Along the vein of the chronology problem, notice that Moore wants to bring Roger Smith to Flint to see the devastation. The film explains that GM, the richest corporation in the world, closed 11 North American plants. Work went to Mexico. With increased profits, money goes to shareholders. They then invest in high tech weaponry. Before this, they were the most profitable corporation in the history of mankind, but this decision is made to increase the profit margin further (needlessly, the film asserts).So here's my point about that paragraph. They spend 28 seconds on these highly important facts. Now notice that they spend about 5-10 minutes on Miss America, and another 5 or so minutes on the crazy rabbit lady, simply because people will get a kick out of that stuff. That's also a big part of what I'm talking about. How can you discuss complex global economics in 28 seconds? Left out are the facts that there was a significant recession at the time, lots of unemployment, and lots of people buying imports which were cheaper and more efficient with the gas crisis. In order for plants to close, contracts had to be dissolved and the UAW played a huge role in this. This is pertinent information that people need to know if they are to be educated on this subject. Yet Michael Moore is harder on Miss America than on the UAW. He displays some condescension and ambush journalism tactics like with the wealthy old ladies at the golf course.You see, I'm not saying he's lying, I'm saying he's twisting and distorting. The whole thing is just an entertaining film designed to fill theater seats. It's not pure documentary.And like I said, Michael Moore is not just an average blue-collar "one-of-the-guys" type of guy, he's a media giant (admittedly this was not AS true in 1989, but he was still big). Putting on the baseball cap and jeans, not lighting anything, and walking in the front door of GM to try to get an interview with Roger Smith is totally absurd. They were very conscious decisions and very trite ways to get some entertaining footage.Even if you can somehow dismiss those problems with Roger & Me, I have one that's a lot harder to deal with. This film was made on bad faith. He wants to present himself as the intrepid "Joe Plainfolks" going on a noble quest to bring Smith to Flint and force him to own up to the consequences of his decision. This goal was abandoned in favor of making a comedy. Whatever the serious, human, and compelling issues motivated Roger & Me were thrown out the window in favor of making a series of SNL skits.Apparently Roger & Me is not meant to be seen as pure documentary, but as advocacy and partisan journalism, it's just that it's not marketed that way. Sadly, and this is coming from someone who mostly agrees with Moore's opinions, I have to call 'BS' on this film.

Roger & Me (1989) *** (out of 4) Michael Moore broke onto the scene with this satirical look at Flint, Michigan, the director's hometown, which pretty much crumbled to the ground after General Motors laid off 30,000 workers and shut down the factories. Moore, with his camera crew, travels to various locations to meet the people effected by this but he also tries to track down GM chairman Roger Smith so that he come back to Flint and see what impact his decision had on the town. When viewing ROGER & ME today it's easy to spot all the familiar Michael Moore touches but when this was first released people just saw this as a new sort of documentary. When viewed today the freshness might not be on high alert but for the most part I think it remains fun just seeing Moore work his magic. It's even fun to look at this film today and compare the tricks of Moore to the type he'd be pulling in his most current films. I think the one thing working so well for this movie is that Moore is able to get his message across loud and clear. One such example is going around with the local Sheriff to kick people out of their homes. Moore is right there are the eviction notices are handed out and we see people being forced to leave their items behind and move to only God knows where. Another thing going for the film is Moore's dark sense of humor and the way he's able to be sarcastic even in the darkest of moments. One such example is the way that he's trying to get the interview with Smith by constantly being asked to leave private clubs, events and of course the GM building. This type of thing is something we've seen Moore do throughout his career and it's fun to see where it started. With that said, there are a few problems with the film and I think some of the interviews go nowhere and really add very little to the film. I also think you have to put up with some one-sided moments throughout the picture. No one is saying the lay offs weren't horrible but nothing is ever mentioned about packages that the people might have been given. ROGER & ME remains an entertaining documentary and worth seeing even if you can't stand Moore's current behavior.

When General Motors chairman Roger Smith closed the factory doors in the once prosperous auto capitol of Flint, Michigan, the subsequent citywide depression prompted filmmaker Michael Moore onto a personal quest to confront the GM executive with the consequences of his corporate greed. The result is an irreverent but sobering report that works better as a satire than a documentary, mocking the rich and defending the poor with an almost savage disregard for objectivity.Moore is neither an impartial observer nor a polite critic of Reaganomics, and his guerrilla-tactic documentary is, without apology, a totally biased dissection of the American Dream gone sour. On its surface the film is a record of the director's comic odyssey in pursuit of Smith, who Moore holds personally responsible for transforming his hometown from a proud capitol of industry into what Money Magazine later called the worst city in the USA. But of course Moore himself is as much the subject here as his elusive quarry, and he sets himself up as a champion of the common worker while sometimes poking fun at the same people he should be defending.It's easy to see how the director maintains a straight face, but he doesn't demand the same from his audience. And while his film isn't exactly a comedy, all the ironies and absurdities found in the clash between optimistic civic fantasy and harsh economic reality still provide a hilarious (if morbid) portrait of America in the 1980s. It's too bad that Moore isn't above getting laughs from cheap shots at Conservative mouthpieces like Pat Boone and Bob Eubanks (foolishly sharing ugly AIDS jokes on camera), none of whom are responsible for the Flint City economic chaos.Self-serving humor aside, there's more than enough truth here to shake the confidence of even the most stalwart Republican, with some absurd (almost surrealistic) juxtapositions of rich and poor, contrasting the pipe dreams of civic recovery (Pat Boone recommends a more positive attitude) with the economic nightmare of layoffs and evictions.In retrospect, Moore's need to make a crowd-pleasing movie may have spoiled his aim to hold Smith in any way accountable for his corporate negligence, and the facetious tone and black-comic digressions don't do his progressive agenda any favors. On top of which the director's self-serving publicity (for example his unlikely claim that the project was financed by an ongoing bingo game) has the unfortunate side effect of distracting attention away from the issues, to sell his own blue-collar credentials.