News

• Slacker Uprising
• Directed by Michael Moore
• With REM, Joan Baez, Steve Earle
• Classification: PG
• Rating:

Slacker Uprising, a documentary from Michael Moore, was released on the Internet for free yesterday (slackeruprising.com ), a gesture the filmmaker has described as a "gift to his fans" and an attempt to persuade Americans of the importance of voting in the upcoming election. Though Moore does not stand to profit from the decision, it's also something of a salvage operation for a $2-million film that Moore and the Weinstein Company would have had a tough time selling in theatrical release.

Introduced in 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival under the title Captain Mike Across America, reviewers complained that this concert-style movie of Moore's speaking tour before the 2004 election felt like an outdated vanity project. (Moore released the much superior Sicko, on America's health-care failures, in the summer of 2007). Captain Mike Across America was retitled Slacker Uprising.

Whatever the title, the star of the event is Moore, making impassioned and sardonic speeches against the Bush administration and trying "to save John Kerry and the Democrats from themselves," on a 62-stop, 45-day tour. There's no dramatic arc, just a lot of place names, a few impediments and people saying what you'd expect them to say.

Moore introduces celebrity supporters such as Viggo Mortensen, Michael Stipe from REM and Roseanne Barr, who talk about how terrific Moore is. Various singers, ranging from Joan Baez to Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, Steve Earle and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, sing songs and second the opinion. Moore is shown as a compassionate guy, whether praising the nobility of the military, paying deference to a fallen soldier's mother, or looking pensive at the site of the Kent State killings.

Fulfilling their role as the forces of darkness, various Republican enemies attempt to bribe or pose legal obstacles to colleges that invited the filmmaker to their campuses. Various strident pro-Bush protesters appear on screen and condemn themselves with their ignorance and venom. When a Christian right group ostentatiously begins praying through one of his rallies, Moore (a leftist Catholic) sneers back: "Who would Jesus bomb?"

There aren't many bright spots amid these exchanges of rhetoric and ridicule, although Moore is refreshingly tough with the media. In response to a press conference question about the "propaganda" content of Fahrenheit 9/11, he talks about the propaganda content of the nightly news.

Otherwise, Slacker Uprising leaves a hollow feeling, in contrast to the determinedly upbeat self-congratulatory message. The film concludes by declaring that the young demographic whom Moore targeted voted against Bush in record numbers. The truth is Moore's strategy for saving the Democrats didn't work and neither does his film.