Roger & Me - Criticism

Criticism

Film critic Pauline Kael felt the film exaggerated the social impact of GM's closing of the plant and depicted the actual events of Flint's troubles out of chronological order. Kael called the film "shallow and facetious, a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing". One such criticism is that the eviction at the end of the film occurred on a different day from Smith's speech, but the two events were intercut for emotional effect. Moore addresses this criticism in the DVD commentary, stating that "there are no dates in the film; we'll be going back and forth throughout the decade of the '80s."

In March 2007, Canadian filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine appeared on MSNBC's Tucker to talk about their documentary Manufacturing Dissent. They reported to have found that Moore talked with General Motors Chairman Roger Smith at a company shareholders' meeting, and that this interview was cut from Roger & Me. Moore acknowledged having spoken with Roger Smith at a shareholders' meeting in 1987, before he commenced filming, but said the encounter concerned a separate topic unrelated to the film. The filmmaker also told the Associated Press that if he had managed to secure an interview with Smith during production, then suppressed the footage, General Motors would have publicized the information to discredit him. "I'm so used to listening to the stuff people say about me, it just becomes entertainment for me at this point," he remarked. "It's a fictional character that's been created with the name of Michael Moore."

Critic Roger Ebert wrote an article entitled, "Attacks on 'Roger & Me' completely miss point of film" that defends Moore's manipulation of his film's timeline as an artistic and stylistic choice that has less to do with his credibility as a filmmaker and more to do with the flexibility of film as a medium to express a viewpoint using the same methods that satirists have used. Ebert argues that the point of the film is not to present a completely cut and dried presentation of facts, but instead to create a jumping point for interest and dialogue through use of humor and irony.

Critic Billy Stevenson described the film as Moore's "most astonishing", arguing that it represents an effort to conflate film-making and labor, and that "it's this fusion of film-making and work that allows Moore to fully convey the desecration of Flint without ever transforming it into a sublime or melancholy poverty-spectacle, thereby distancing himself from the retouristing of the town-as-simulacrum that occupies the last and most intriguing part of the film."

The AHA has given the movie an "Unacceptable" rating citing that a rabbit was killed during the filming.