Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This film has aged horribly and phenomenally. In order to expose the total inhumane and non-empathetic attitude of The boss of General Motors, Roger XXX, in 1988, when GM closed eleven factories in the USA, including the one in Flint, Michigan, and then opened eleven factories in Mexico and other foreign countries where labor was cheaper than in the USA, Michael Moore in this film appears today as defending a position that is bringing a whole vision of the world to ruin and chaos.The working class in those days, up to the 1990s and at times even beyond, be it blue collar or white collar, had been educated if not tamed or broken-in and enslaved into the ideology that you had to get a job at 18 or 20 or even 22 and 24, and it was THE ONLY job you'll have all lifelong and you will retire and even die in it. They then stopped learning, stopped improving, stopped being dynamic and athletic. They started getting fat, enjoying hours in front of TV and the satisfying though humdrum routine of a life that was a descent into hell. Then you can imagine the drama if they lost their jobs. It is true the whole system was based on that planting these human plants in permanent places since human beings are perennials as is well known. And you can imagine what this ideology, this life style could produce as for distortion and inhumanity, like sexism and genderism, racism, nationalism, and so many other -isms including rebellion- ism, provocation-ism, jingo-ism (and dingo-ism), antisemitism, anti- intellectualism, etc.-ism. These human beings became chattel, human possessions of the business that exploited them, and pumped them dry of all resources. Came the big recession of 2008-2009 and it luckily produced at first Obama-ism or "Yes-You-Can-ism" and after eight years of not coming out of the hole by going back to the good old days when you were born in any no-matter-which-industry to retire and die in it they moved to Trump-ism and Political-Hollywood-ism. And a millionaire braggart and his band of circus-and-menagerie millionaires were able to capture their attention with fake promises, like reopening the coal mines, which he could do but not with human miners, rather robotized coal-diggers, or reopen the car factories, but not with human blue collar workers like in Mexico where they are cheap but with robotized blue collar workers who are even cheaper than workers in Mexico. What the Chinese are doing because they have to cope with the one child per family policy and replace three or four out-going low qualified workers by one highly qualified worker, that is to say shifting to highly automated and robotized, in one word or acronym AI-ed or should I say AI-zed, industry, administration, commerce etc., just as they shifted from a cash economy to the most virtualized monetary exchanges imaginable on earth, Trump and his acolytes are going to do it in order to even increase some more their profit margins. The millionaire in the White House, and all his millionaire pals, know that but they think that in four years the naïve blind monkeys who elected them will have forgotten the promises and hopefully there will be no inflation, for what it may matter, and hopefully the people will be so drunk with fury that they will start breaking everything and they will be dealt with the National Guard and real bullets. Because, and here Michael Moore shows it so well, cynicism is the first and main characteristic of the "ruling class," capitalistic, elected or not, appointed or just social climbing. Good morning the post-hang-over era and good afternoon the pre- delirium-tremens curse. We only have the leaders we deserve and I must say that the ideology birth-life-death-in-one-job only deserves leaders who are ruling over our toilet habits. And they will certainly not invent like in Brussels the common toilet, serve everyone and all people indifferently. Look at North Carolina.Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

calvinnme Michael Moore's first major film was one of his best in my opinion for two reasons. First off, since he did not yet have a trademark style, he did not try to go over the top in this film as much as he does in his subsequent efforts. He does his normal routine of tracking people down in an effort to embarrass them by asking them pointed questions, but for most of the film he lets the story and the citizens of Flint do the talking. As you probably already know, this is the story of Moore's hometown, Flint, Michigan, and the utter despair that fell upon it after GM began shuttering auto plants under the supervision of then CEO Roger Smith. The film really highlights how clueless Flint's elite are as to the suffering that all of this "consolidation" is causing. At one point in the film Moore is talking to some wealthy people at a party who seem to think they are doing the unemployed some kind of favor by hiring them to act as living statues at one of their fêtes. When he asks the party goers about what is going on in Flint they seem somewhat offended that there is such "negative publicity" circulating and say there should be more emphasis on the positive things going on in Flint - they name the symphony and the opera. Ah yes, let them eat opera glasses! The second reason I consider this film to be one of Moore's best is that even though this film was made in 1989, it is still interesting and relevant today. This is because the contrast between what average working people have to endure - the struggle to find secure jobs with decent benefits and their increasing vulnerability - and the desire of the captains of industry to improve the bottom line at any cost ... as long as it doesn't cost them ... has only worsened and deepened over the last 21 years since this film was first made.

DKosty123 This film is the most creative of Moore's efforts. It details the plight of Flint, Michigan because of General Motors (GM) layoffs in the late 1980's. It is named Roger & Me because the films story line is Morres pursuit of Roger Smith, the CEO of GM at this time, to find out why he is laying off all these workers & moving a bunch of jobs from Flint to Mexico.Remember, this is before the twin disasters of NAFTA & GAAT in the 1990's by Bubba's Administration & Party in 1993. Moores pursuit of Smith is super imposed over the compelling story of the suffering in Flint. All the story telling in this is well done.The film clips of GM's heydays in the 1950's with Pat Boone & Dinah Shore provide a great intro to the film. There are several dramatic reactions by auto workers getting laid off & their desperation. The city of Flints angst is well documented too.Moore never does catch Roger Smith. This is too bad because historically there is a very solid reason that GM started moving these jobs out of the country. Roger Smith would not have told the full truth if he had caught him. Smith would have told Moore that GM was doing the job exodus to remain competitive if cornered.There is something more important which Moore missed & Smith would not tell. The reason GM had to move those jobs is because of a change in Corporate Taxes pushed through in the 1986 Tax Law changes. That change eliminated from the Corporate Tax code the cost of the legal deductions of employee benefits by American Corporations. This made American jobs less competitive with other countries.Government did this in 1986 because they already knew the effect that baby boomer's aging would have on Medical costs, & knew if they remained deductible on US Corporations books, our Government could not afford the future cost of them being deductible. Before you blame Reagen for this, a reminder, the House & Senate were both controlled by Democrats when this passed.Moore is not smart enough to figure this out, which is why this film does not rate a 10 with me. If American Corporations could still deduct employee health benefits on their taxes, there would be no need for National Health Care, & it would start to counter balance some of the effect of NAFTA & GAAT by making the American worker more competitive again. Unfortunately, that is not in both "Parties" best interest.Post Script - Roger Smith (executive) Roger Bonham Smith (July 12, 1925 – November 29, 2007) was the Chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation from 1981 to 1990, and is widely known as the main subject of Michael Moore's 1989 documentary film Roger & Me.In 1981, Smith got the worlds largest car company and instead of looking for ways to grow the company which had more assets than any in the world, he started to destroy it. The results of his tenure became clear in less than 2 years after his death when GM went bankrupt and reorganized with major Federal Government help. This movie has a historic sequence where Michael Moore alternates between his cop throwing people out of their homes who have lost GM jobs due to Smith, and Smith giving one of the most stupid Christmas speeches ever made by a CEO. Fortune Magazine has given Smith a very much deserved credit for destroying the worlds largest corporations, and this film illustrates it clearly. TCM recently ran an edited version of this "R" Rated Classic.

Fido Max Flint is small town that was for many years a extension to General Motors factory. One morning boss of Genergal Motor – Roger Smith woke up and discover the fact that closing the factory and fire of 30,000 people can make better business than carry on with production, despite the fact that factory didn't bring any losses."Roger and Me" is document where Michael Moore report the slow but systematic fall of his hometown because of Roger Smith decision. Moore just want one thing – bring Roger Smith to the town, so he can see with his own eyes the fallout. I wont spoiler, let me just say the one of last scene of this movie is very eerie and surreal.This is very interesting document, when every reported thing is scary, curious and funny. My favorite moment is interview with women breeding rabbits (for pets, and for meat), but all of this encounters with Flint's peasants are at least informative. Yeah, it's a manipulation by Moore like always (I hate his Fahrenheit because of that), but here he selected and arranged the moment in very powerful way. The situation is real, and the horror of it its more then real, when we see this hopeless, not very bright people who where just because of one man decision put on the highway to hell.And of course this movie is all about Moore. He is everywhere, non stop commenting, but the god-crusader from last scene of "Bowling for columbine" (Heston) is no where near here, and that's a good thing. This movie is just a well aimed shot, a punk-rock scream for a social injustice. This is art for document with power to stir up emotion and show people ugly things just the way they are: evictions, parades, idiotic city decision – ignorance, foolishness, powerlessness – its all powerful evil, and the last scene with very sad Christmas Carol its surreal.