Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore raises a few interesting questions, such as why President Bush went ahead with his visit to the elementary school after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, or how civil liberties might be compromised after the attacks, but his presentation is so juvenile and his facts so obviously unsupported that his charges go wide, wide of their mark. This is especially disturbing in a sequence that cut from the terrible suffering of Iraqi citizens during the war to an interview with Britney Spears. Many of the scenes showing President Bush on his ranch chopping wood, playing golf or responding to questions from the press were obviously designed to show him in as poor a light as possible, but I thought he actually came off better than Moore himself, whose whiny voice-over and smarmy interview style often displays more contempt than concern for his subjects. The scenes of mothers who lost their children are certainly moving, but to follow these emotionally wrenching episodes with a loony conspiracy theory involving Halliburton struck this viewer as little more than tawdry exploitation. D