The New Yorker: Michael Moore’s viciously funny attack on the Bush Administration.

The New Yorker: The Critics: The Current Cinema: "In Michael Moore's new documentary, - Fahrenheit 9/11, - George W. Bush sets his jaw, leans forward, and tells a group of reporters that terrorism must be destroyed. Then, turning away, he says, "Now watch this drive," and tees off. A golfer, a bird hunter, a sportive wit at gatherings of the super-rich ("Some people call you the "lite. I call you my base"), the President is often at play in "Fahrenheit 9/11." In this incendiary and viciously funny attack on the Bush Administration - a whirlwind of political charges, sinister implications, and derision - the President comes off as a betrayer and a fool who has all the substance of a stuffed doll. Moore accuses Bush of handing part of America's sovereignty to the Saudis; he implies that the president, after 9/11, was more effective at frightening the electorate than at pursuing the terrorists. Given its mixture of anguish and contempt, "Fahrenheit 9/11" can't miss becoming a hit, with the result that the Republican Party and its allies will be all over Michael Moore for months. I have some difficulties with Moore myself, and I'm not entirely impressed by the standing ovation and the Palme d'Or that the film received recently at Cannes, where the audience may have been all too eager to applaud its own detestation of the United States. Still, this is Moore's most powerful movie - the largest in scope, the most resourceful and skillful in means - and the best things in it have little to do with his usual ideological take on American power and George Bush. In the last third of the film, Moore gets hold of a genuine protagonist, and he has the good sense to stay out of her way."

by DAVID DENBY

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