Capitalism: A Love Story

Directed by Michael Moore

(R)

***

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Michael Moore takes on big business.

“Love him or hate him, Michael Moore is a funny guy,” said Leah Rozen in People. You’d have to completely lack a sense of humor not to crack a smile when he cordons off the New York Stock Exchange with yellow crime tape in Capitalism: A Love Story. In this rambling indictment of corporate America, the Oscar-winning documentarian takes on a few too many targets—exploring the roots of the financial collapse, chronicling financial institutions’ greed, and finally pinning blame on capitalism in general. But Moore “hits the bull’s-eye often enough to keep you amused, engaged, and sometimes enraged.” Moore goes too far when he depicts the “very concept of American free enterprise as inherently unjust,” said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Though “mischievously funny,” Capitalism: A Love Story at times seems little more than “dorm-room Marxism.” Sure, Moore can be sophomoric, said Richard Corliss in Time. But only he could make the exposé of such an “epic crime” come off as such an “epic good time.” A perfect catharsis for anyone frustrated with our country’s financial mess, Capitalism: A Love Story is his “most vigorous, rollicking, broadly ambitious work yet.”