 It's hard to tell whether many reviews of Fahrenheit 9/11 are expressions of political sentiment or artistic appraisals. Indeed, several critics suggest that politics is the overwhelming factor here and that reviews may be superfluous. As Ann Hornaday observes in her review in the Washington Post: "Most people reading this already know whether they're going or not." The majority of critics are showering it with high praise, but it is clear that several of them clearly loathe it. Some critics are of two minds about it. Writes Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "As its worst, Fahrenheit is a work of political vaudeville in which Moore is guilty of many of the things he accuses Bush of: arrogance, agitating the electorate, playing to the base. At its best, it is a magnificent piece of filmmaking that listens to the woman on the street and to the man in the trenches about their changes of heart vis-a-vis Iraq." Among the cheer leaders, Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun-Times that the movie "is a compelling, persuasive film, at odds with the White House effort to present Bush as a strong leader." Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Sun-Times cheers louder: "It's another howitzer blast of heartland humor and journalistic chutzpah from director-writer Moore--his cheekiest, gutsiest, most hilarious assault yet on the halls of the rich and mighty." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times agrees, writing: "With expertly deployed footage and a take-no-prisoners attitude that echoes that of his conservative betes noir, Moore has made an overwhelming film. It is propaganda, no doubt about it, but propaganda is most effective when it has elements of truth, and too much here is taken from the record not to have a devastating effect on viewers." But Moore has plenty of detractors among the critics, too. "Moore is so anti-Bush that he becomes a Bizarro-world version of Bush himself: tone-deaf, spluttering, incapable of framing an intelligent debate," writes Michael Sragow in the Baltimore Sun. Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal calls the movie, "a postmodern, postliterary piece of agitprop, coming at a time when truth is often the first victim in supermarket tabloids, radio talk shows, campaign commercials on network TV and gabble-fests on cable." And Terry Lawson in the Detroit Free Press labels the movie "a kidney punch." |
