Rating: R
Genre:
Culture & Society
Theatrical Release: 12/20/1989(USA)
Release Date: 08/19/2003
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 90 min
Flags: Violence, Not For Children
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
Michael Moore's wickedly iconoclastic documentary was inspired by the decline and fall of Flint, Michigan. Once the site of a thriving General Motors plant, Flint went quickly to seed when GM decided to close down and move out. As Moore pokes around what has been described by one magazine as "the worst place to live in America", he finds out how the local populace is coping with GM's betrayal of the American Dream. Among those visited are a family who is evicted just before Christmas, and an enterprising middle-aged woman who set up a thriving business slaughtering and skinning rabbits. Never feigning objectivity, Moore contrasts the impact of the shutdown on the average Joes and Janes with the diffident reaction of Flint's power elite. The latter's patronizing attitude towards the unemployed multitudes is succinctly captured in the scenes in which visiting celebrities Robert Schuller, Anita Bryant, Bobby Vinton and Pat Boone exhort the citizenry to grin and bear it. Even more out of synch is "Miss Michigan" Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, who in her morale-boosting speech to the disenfranchised GM employees begs them to pull for her in the upcoming Miss America pageant! The film's throughline is Moore's futile effort to locate GM chairman Roger Smith, so that he can show Moore first-hand the utter devastation of Flint.
Roger & Me is very funny, but it is the gallows humor of soldiers about to embark on a suicide mission. In 1992, Michael Moore more or less updated
Roger & Me with his half-hour short subject
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Michael Moore's
Roger & Me offers a scathing critique of corporate America. Offering a strong point-of-view and a palpable contempt for anyone who takes advantage of the working class,
Moore reveals a series of heartbreaking people whose lives and city have been taken away from them due to corporate greed.
Moore's everyman persona provides a perfect disguise. Those in positions of authority who are willing to talk to him for this film seem unable to comprehend how this chubby average guy could possibly do them any harm. While he certainly takes (arguably deserved but always hilarious) potshots at a future Miss America,
game show host
Bob Eubanks, and crooner
Pat Boone,
Moore's bitterness is tempered by a sadness that allows one to forgive him when his
satire hits an innocent bystander rather than his intended target. Funny, cruel, outraged, and sad,
Roger & Me offers more emotions than the average fiction film -- one of the many reasons it became the most successful
documentary ever at the time it was released.
~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
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