Where to Invade Next

“I’ve turned into this crazy opti­mist,” con­fess­es inex­haustible rab­ble-rouser Michael Moore, near­ing the end of his lat­est right­eous quest. Despite the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly provoca­tive title, the new film from the dad­dy of mod­ern pop­ulist doc­u­men­tary is not about the busi­ness of war, rather it sees the globe-trot­ting Amer­i­can stag­ing a series of mock inva­sions of coun­tries where things actu­al­ly work. He’s after their ideas and he’s not going home emp­ty handed.

Where to Invade Next large­ly focus­es on the suc­cess sto­ries of Europe, with the UK – whose NHS came in for praise in 2007’s Sicko – a notable omis­sion this time around. The film­mak­er lauds the gen­er­ous hol­i­day and mater­ni­ty leave of Italy, the mouth-water­ing school lunch­es of France, the com­pas­sion­ate atti­tude towards work-relat­ed stress of Ger­many, the decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of drugs in Por­tu­gal, the reha­bil­i­ta­tion-based penal sys­tem of Nor­way (where we’re told the recidi­vism rate is 20 per cent, com­pared to the US where it is 80 per cent), the gen­der equal­i­ty of Ice­land, and more.

His inter­vie­wees are cheer­ful and well-adjust­ed, if some­times bor­der­line smug. They are hap­py to play along with the premise and reserve their harsh­est words for the behav­iour of the US itself. This upbeat effort feels a long way from Moore’s bit­ter­ly per­son­al 1989 film Roger & Me, or 2002’s pas­sion­ate­ly polem­i­cal Bowl­ing for Columbine. By focus­ing on the solu­tions rather than expound­ing on America’s prob­lems, Moore cre­ates an emo­tion­al dis­tance, one which facil­i­tates the film’s pos­i­tive ​“look what’s pos­si­ble!” mes­sage. It does, how­ev­er, mean that this per­son­able film­mak­er is func­tion­ing at a remove.

The approach of cher­ry-pick­ing the good but ignor­ing the bad also means that Where to Invade Next some­times feels like a series of chip­per adver­tise­ments for for­eign climes. For­tu­nate­ly, our guide’s know­ing, cur­mud­geon­ly per­sona acts as a coun­ter­weight to stop it soar­ing away, while there is men­tion that the ben­e­fits fea­tured haven’t come eas­i­ly and that they remain precarious.

It’s snap­pi­ly edit­ed and Moore’s shtick is, as ever, enter­tain­ing and per­sua­sive. With the threat of a Trump White House loom­ing large, this list of tried and test­ed fix­es to America’s ills couldn’t have come at a bet­ter time. His pri­ma­ry objec­tive is undoubt­ed­ly to per­suade his coun­try­men to embrace rad­i­cal, life-enhanc­ing and humane reforms rather than, say, putting them­selves at the mer­cy of a scare­mon­ger­ing loon. The film is, how­ev­er, released in the UK a mere fort­night before the nation heads to the polls for an EU ref­er­en­dum, and pro­vides a com­pelling argu­ment for con­tin­u­ing to align our­selves with those who have appar­ent­ly nailed their pur­suit of happiness.

The film iron­i­cal­ly sneers at and stereo­types its sub­jects, mak­ing the usu­al gags about French peo­ple all being cow­ards and Ger­mans all bores. It then shows us who is real­ly laugh­ing by lay­ing out their smart solu­tions and supe­ri­or qual­i­ty of life. The slight­ly odd inva­sion con­ceit and unwieldy range of issues cov­ered means it’s not quite vin­tage Moore, but Where to Invade Next spins a wealth of inspir­ing, action­able ideas into a rous­ing and – cru­cial­ly – acces­si­ble call for change.