Where to Invade Next

A documentary about America’s dubious global ambitions. Directed by Michael Moore. Premiering at TIFF 2015. 110 minutes. STC

Michael Moore introduced his new documentary Where to Invade Next as a quest for “the American soul” Thursday night at its TIFF world premiere, and it certainly is that, in ways playful, provocative and inspiring.

The fiery Michigan filmmaker also rediscovers something he seemed to have forgotten about: his funny bone. This is his most amusing film in many a moon and also his most affecting, frequently prompting laughter and applause from the capacity audience at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

Arriving with scant advance notice and even less description of its contents, Where to Invade Next looked going in to be another of Moore’s finger-pointing critiques of U.S. domestic fumbles and foreign misadventures, in the vein of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Capitalism: A Love Story.

And it starts off that way, with Moore listing all the global wars that America has started and/or meddled in, often with unhappy results. He stages a mock meeting of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., wherein exasperated military brass task him to be advance scout for a U.S. invasion of any place in the world where he thinks Uncle Sam’s presence might actually do some good.

Here the film takes a decidedly different tone, explaining why the top-secret project was code-named “Mike’s happy movie” during production.

Moore’s travels take him mainly to Europe, wherein he visits countries that each seem to have found a better and more humane ways of delivering education, nutrition, employment, drug control, justice, women’s rights and many other social benefits than America has achieved.

In Italy, he marvels at happy workers who enjoy holidays and paid time off that North Americans can only dream about. In France, he finds schools where gourmet meals are served in even the most blue-collar of neighbourhoods.

Germany is apparently a capitalist Utopia were even a humble pencil factory can turn a profit while paying big wages, and where employers are penalized if they email their staff after hours or on weekends.

Portugal seems to get by with zero arrests for drug abuse, Slovenia offers free university tuition it generously extends even to foreign nationals (including many Americans) and Norway treats its criminals with so much respect, one maximum-security prison greets new arrivals with a welcoming video of the warden and guards singing “We Are The World.”

The latter part of the film highlights how women have risen to the top of political and corporate posts in such disparate places as Tunisia and Iceland, with all indications being that they’re superior to men in every regard.

At every stop, Moore stages a tongue-in-cheek “invasion” ceremony where he presents a furled U.S. flag to someone whose good idea he is stealing to take back to America. The amused locals are very much in on the gag.

He also finds time to revisit the site of the former Berlin Wall with an old friend, recalling how as young men in 1989 they’d watched with delight and awe as a few hammer blows by determined citizens brought down a barrier of oppression that had stood for decades.

The film runs long at nearly two hours, and at times threatens to overstate its case or to turn into uncritical promotion of the European way of life, which even many European leaders now argue has grown too expensive to fully support.

But Moore does include reminders of national ills, such as Germany’s Nazi past, pointing out that other countries are more open and honest about their history than Americans tend to be.

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And he brings it all back home with a brilliant ending that suggests that maybe all these great “foreign” ideas aren’t so foreign after all.

At the Q&A session following the screening, Moore attempted to deflect critics by noting that he didn’t visit such places as Greece, a country in perilous economic condition, because he went on his journey “to pick the flowers, not the weeds.” He wants to make America a better place by showing that supposedly impossible ideals and practices are thriving elsewhere.

Darned if he doesn’t succeed in making his point, as the standing ovation from the Princess of Wales audience indicated.

Where to Invade Next proves to be a stealth mission in best of ways, recalling the adage that you attract more flies with honey rather than vinegar.