Where to Invade Next review: Michael Moore documentary is surprisingly charming and playful

Michael Moore, 120 mins, featuring: Michael Moore

In spite of its title, this is Michael Moore in less stridently polemical mood than in many of his earlier, angrier, documentaries. It’s a surprisingly charming and playful affair but one that asks plenty of provocative questions. Moore starts from the premise that America’s military and political leaders have lost their way (“we don’t know what the f**k we are doing”), and have called him into help.

Ever the patriot, Moore drapes himself in the stars and stripes and embarks on a one-man expedition to rescue his homeland. By “invading” various countries in Europe and North Africa, he hopes to discover social and political ideas that he can bring home to the US.

“They pay for your honeymoon!” the filmmaker exclaims in complete astonishment on the first leg of his trip, to Italy. Here, he meets a young working class couple who are given seven or eight weeks of paid holiday a year. He is equally astounded by the attitude of the owner of the Ducati motorbike factory, who speaks to him on the factory floor and who seems more concerned with the welfare of his workers than any profits he might make. In fact, as Moore discovers, the happier these workers are, the more time for eating, recreation and lovemaking they have, the more productive they become.

Europeans watching the film may think that Moore is guilty of both very selective vision and of a certain dewy-eyed naivety. He doesn’t pay any attention to the migration crisis, unemployment, the rise of nationalism and the many political fissures in the countries he is visiting. However, as he makes clear at the outset, he is looking to “pick the flowers, not the weeds.” His focus is on the policies and social practices that work the best.

There is a comical, Jamie Oliver-style interlude in which the imposing and bulky Moore, looking like the honey monster, samples the lunch in a typical French school. The French take their food very seriously. (The school chef, the head teacher, and the mayor meet every month to set the menu.) The kids, busy eating their vegetables, fruits, and camemberts, react toward the American as if he is the anti-christ when he offers them some of his coke. They’re even more startled when they are shown images of the slop served up in American schools.

In Norway, Moore is taken to maximum security prisons run along the lines of glorified holiday camps (but which are far more successful at rehabilitating inmates than their American equivalents.) In Finland, he discovers the secret of the country’s successful education policy - namely never giving any of the kids any homework.

He learns about Portuguese drug policy (which might be described as zero intolerance.) Hie discovers how women CEOs and politicians rescued the Icelandic economy after the willy waving male bankers almost brought it to collapse. He realises just how much attention that German kids are forced to pay in the classroom to their country’s vexed recent history. (By contrast, American kids learn little about the part that slavery and genocide played in their backstory.) In Tunisia, he reports how a conservative, Islamist government was persuaded to introduce women’s rights legislation.

You can’t help but notice that his travels don’t take him to the UK. (There doesn’t seem to be much to inspire him here.)

One of the most piercing ironies, brought home to the director by several of his interviewees, is that many of the best and most utopian ideas he encounters were actually borrowed from the US. Now, he wants to borrow them back.

Where To Invade Next makes consistently entertaining viewing and again demonstrates Moore’s knack of dealing with complex issues in a folksy and populist style. Whether it’s a movie to see in cinemas is another question. In terms of its production values and approach, it often seems more like a TV documentary than a film made for the big screen.