Michael Moore aims to make America better

PHOTOGRAPHER: The Chicago Tribune

Michael Moore’s wry first-person documentary “Where to Invade Next,” his first since 2009 and “Capitalism: A Love Story,” isn’t what it sounds like. The title suggests a cry, or a typically ironic Moore screed, against the history and dangers of recent U.S. foreign policy. But Moore’s latest goes a different direction. It follows one goofball firebrand’s “invasion” of a few choice countries abroad where the spending priorities and social safety nets are more to his liking, and offer plenty to envy.

Moore states his mission up front. “I will invade countries populated by Caucasians with names I can mostly pronounce,” he says, narrating the action, “take the things we need from them, and bring it all back home to the United States of America.” Thus begins his breezy if somewhat attenuated suggestion list.

‘Where to Invade Next’

DIRECTED BY: Michael Moore

STARRING: Michael Moore, Krista Kiuru and Tim Walker

RATED: R GRADE: B-

RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes

The intense and white-hot snark of “Fahrenheit 9/11” has mellowed here, as has the bitter outlook of much of his work. “Where to Invade Next” may fall prey to some of the usual generalities and factual shortcuts, but there’s a more optimistic and embracing spirit behind it.

First stop: Italy, where Moore cherry-picks examples of factories that treat their employees like queens and kings, and workers enjoy up to two months’ paid vacation. In rural Normandy, Moore pals around with schoolchildren being treated to an amazing hot lunch. As Moore shares photos of American school lunches with his French hosts, their faces say it all.

From there we skip to Finland for a primer on their lavish and egalitarian public education strategies; to Slovenia, where university education is free; and then to Germany, Portugal and Iceland. “My mission is to pick the flowers, not the weeds,” Moore says.

The film is entertaining and disingenuous, which doesn’t make it wrong. It proposes serious consideration of so many progressive ideals, it can barely sort them out. This is an old drawback of Moore’s work: Sometimes he tries to get by on jokes, rather than cogent argument. As always, Moore believes in the gut punch: here, when we hear George W. Bush utter the word “freedom” in an old speech about American values, it comes at the precise instant we see news footage of a white police officer jamming the head of a young black man into the pavement.

Even so, “Where to Invade Next” believes in America as a viable work in progress.