Sicko finally came to my little town this weekend. People criticize Michael Moore for oversimplifying things, and being a tad dramatic, but I think, if you consider his audience and his intentions, it makes sense that he would simplify and dramatize his films. If you're trying to get the general public (particularly young people) interested and engaged in topics they tend to resist, you have to entertain them. And, if nothing else, his films are entertaining, something documentaries often aren't.

I've been meaning to see An Inconvenient Truth for quite some time now, but when I'm looking for a movie to watch in those rare moments when I'm not working or studying, I find it really difficult to pick something that I know will depress me. That said, I knew Sicko would be depressing, but I was anxious to see it because Moore manages to be funny while being depressing. He's what my aunt Margie back on Long Island would call, "a pisser."

It seems to me, Moore's films serve to start discussions and to get audiences that would not normally pay any attention to the issues he brings up to begin thinking about them. For instance, I took my sixteen-year-old sister to see the Sicko. Now, I doubt she's ever thought about universal healthcare before, and she probably won't start sending letters to Washington about it tomorrow. However, now she's aware that our healthcare system is not adequate, and maybe in a couple of years, when she gets to college, she'll be more politically engaged because the seed of progressivism was planted early. Class consciousness does not happen in a flash, it is something that grows gradually as we learn to parse the world around us.