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May 27, 2007 at 04:00 PM
“Sicko,” Michael Moore’s biting new take on the U.S. health care system, is set for nationwide release June 29 but has already gotten mostly favorable early reviews at the Cannes Film Festival.
Moore, whose harangue against the Bush administration, “Farhenheit 9/11,” won the top prize at Cannes in 2004, insists his movie will not go after health care companies or other big businesses, according to interviews last week with reporters. Among its main points is that government-backed health care in France, Canada and even Cuba is superior to the American system, he says.
Early reviews included one from Fox News that found the film “brilliant and uplifting.”
“Unlike many of his previous films, ‘Sicko’ works because in this one there are no confrontations,” said the reviewer, Roger Friedman. “Moore smartly lets very articulate average Americans tell their personal horror stories at the hands of insurance companies.”
Parts of the movie “will have many moviegoers angry enough to gouge holes in their armrests,” commented another reviewer, Jeffrey Kluger of Time.
But an online critic said he wished the movie had “more clarity and less hilarity.”
“I think that a large mass of the American public is so desperate for someone to speak truth to power that they’ll settle for someone willing to say anything to it, no matter how specious or muddled,” said the critic, James Rocchi of Cinematical.
