With only a teaser to go on until now -- in which he announced a grassroots campaign to coax small-currency donations out of captive movie audiences to feed the distended bellies of corporate CEOs who've fallen upon hard times -- it's about time a real trailer for Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story surfaced.
And what has Moore cooked up for us this time? There's a deep sense of déjà vu here. Shuffling around the buffed marble floors of Wall St.'s once hallowed, now hollowed financial institutions, Moore again finds himself butting heads with agitated building security personnel -- a wisecracking, prodigiously bejoweled Han Solo to their balding, blazer-sporting Storm Troopers. His mission? A "citizen's arrest of the board members of AIG." Compared to the very realizable goal that drove much of his last economically minded film, Roger & Me -- securing some face time with then General Motors CEO Roger Smith -- this one feels too vague and gimmicky to coalesce into a compelling narrative.
And unlike his past topics (guns, healthcare, the Bush regime), which still felt worthy of having some light shed upon them, there's nothing here that suggests Moore is covering new ground on a topic that has earned wall-to-wall coverage for well over a year. Has any stone yet been unturned with respect to this particular subject? There's Bush, and there's Bush again, and there's Bush again pressing flesh with Henry Paulson. Moore has made a movie about the crash, but has he made an interesting movie?
And there she is, as if on cue: M.I.A., with the same song that sold Pineapple Express and Slumdog Millionaire. But if Paper Planes's cash register sounds and gunshots and "All I wanna do is take your money" give the proceedings some edge, nothing -- no, nothing -- is going to make Moore holding a fucking pillow case with a dollar sign hand-drawn on it a good idea.
Verdict: All I wanna do is just bang bang bang.