Please note that this is a blog entry. It is the opinion of the author and doesn’t represent the views of everyone at Antiwar.com. So all you angry letter-writers can address me personally, not all of Antiwar.com.
I really wanted to like Fahrenheit 9/11.
I was excited about seeing it and happy to see that it was beating expectations to top this weekend’s movies, even White Chicks.
I got to the theater early to beat the crowds (not so much for the matinee), full of anticipation. A little over two hours later, I was very disappointed.
The movie opens with Moore’s version of the "stealing" of the 2000 election by the Bush family. Regardless of one’s opinion of this event, it should be clear that this was the weakest opening he could have gone for in terms of actually convincing those not predisposed to hate GW Bush.
He then spends about 20 minutes on the "Saudi connection," which actually struck me as quite racist. I won’t critique this section in detail – I am sure Justin Raimondo will cover this in his Monday column.
The rest of the movie was quite tedious. A combination of boring and overkill, combined with the fact that Moore himself narrates the entire 116 minutes. Literally everything is telegraphed, with no surprises. Moore repeatedly hits you over the head. His focus on victims is limited to only a few individuals, and he makes you sick of them by the time he is done.
Moore blames so much on GW Bush that I actually found myself silently defending him, a feeling that did not sit well with me at all.
I am quite surprised at the near-universal acclaim (see these typical reviews by Roger Ebert and Rex Reed). It reminds me of the reviews for the simply-dreadful movie Bullworth, which was hyped by liberals for its socialist message.
I can only recall a half-dozen brief scenes that made me laugh, in spite of many obvious attempts at humor. And good antiwar movies make me cry. This one didn’t.
I cannot imagine any person changing his or her mind about Bush or the War in Iraq based upon seeing Fahrenheit 9/11. It is a shame.