Has success spoiled Michael Moore? The downsized-worker-turned-filmmaker from Flint seemed like a renegade David taking on a corporate Goliath when he documented his thwarted quest to meet General Motors chairman Roger Smith in the 1989 feature "Roger and Me." Moore cheerfully filled the role of an Everyman speaking out for a middle-class pounded by a recession President George Bush denied was going on.
In the years since "Roger," however, Moore has starred in the "TV Nation" series, directed the feeble feature "American Bacon" and written "Downsize This: Random Threats From An Unarmed American," which hit the New York Times best-seller list (as Mooreıs latest documentary "The Big One" takes great pains to tell us).
In fact, "The Big One" centers around Mooreıs misadventures on a nationwide tour to promote his book, so right off the bat we know his days as a commoner are long-gone. Now he flies first-class (he tries to look embarrassed by it), is chauffeured by perky "media liaisons" (they become easy targets for his barbs) and gives speeches in auditoriums and bookstores filled with fawning fans.
But despite his fame Moore is still on the lookout for greedy business tycoons looking to make a few extra bucks by closing factories and cutting jobs.
It turns out he has numerous offenders to choose from, including the owners of the Payday candy-bar factory in Centralia, Ill., where management freely admits theyıre shutting down because the workers made the plant too profitable, thus endangering the companyıs pending sale.
His minor skirmishes with middle-management types leads up to what Moore must have seen as the challenge of a lifetime: the opportunity to meet face-to-face with unctuous Nike CEO Phil Knight who, Moore accuses, has built his fortune off the sweat of teen-age Indonesian girls who make tennis shoes in his overseas factories for 40 cents an hour. Americans, Knight rationalizes, donıt want to make shoes.
If thereıs a serious flaw to "The Big One" it lies in Mooreıs tendency to mistake self-glamorization for credibility. Much more so than in "Roger and Me," heıs the star of the show here, and donıt think he doesnıt know it. When Moore includes a snippet of White House press secretary Mike McCurry calling him "a dangerous person," itıs a bit obvious Moore sees this as a badge of honor, and thereıs an excessive amount of footage devoted to Moore cheerleading for a band of Borders Books and Music employees struggling to unionize.
"The Big One" is unequivocally a sermon to the converted, but itıs frequently a bitterly funny one. When Moore probes the weird world of corporate subsidies, investigating why the government has given Pillsbury millions to promote their products in the Third World, the clips from a commercial with a Spanish-speaking Pillsbury Doughboy are as hilarious as they are creepy. Even material thatıs now slightly dated, such as Mooreıs campaign-contribution stunt, is still giggle-worthy.
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