One criticism often levelled at Michael Moore's films is that they preach solely to the converted. Few neo-cons are, after all, likely to even buy a ticket for Bowling for Columbine. The problem is more acute for this well-meaning, but largely redundant polemic from Russell Brand. Many sympathetic to the comic's critique of bandit capitalism will be repelled by his flamboyant self-regard and unrepentant arguments against voting.
Michael Winterbottom’s film wisely steers a course away from that last controversy, but, for those allergic to Brand’s exhausting loggerhea, no hiding places are offered. He’s there throughout, like a more annoying Big Brother. Look at him taking up the entire screen. Listen to him telling you not to do what people tell you to do.
If the film-makers had not already spilt the beans with that title – emperor’s new clothes, indeed – one might wonder if Brand was entirely immune to dramatic irony.
His key arguments are, however, perfectly sound. The state vigorously prosecutes the poor, but shows no enthusiasm for chasing high-earning tax cheats or the bankers whose folly precipitated the collapse. Wealth is unfairly distributed. The minimum wage is insultingly low.
Moreover, far from offering no solutions, Brand presents a series of policies that, though now the preserve of a far-left fringe, were once espoused by Labour and Conservative UK governments: punitive taxes on the super-rich, regulation of media ownership and so forth.
The problem is that, over 107 long minutes, nothing much is added to the sentences above. Brand indulges in weaker variations on the worst stunts in Moore’s films: on at least three occasions, he berates apparently decent people working as doormen or receptionists in the offices of offending conglomerates. People hug him in the street. Police officers declare themselves fans.
A brief appearance by the excellent Paul Mason, economics editor for Channel 4 News, offers tantalising suggestions of a more interesting, less celebrity-driven attack on the same subject. True, fewer people would advance enthusiastically towards a Mason film, but fewer would run screaming in the opposite direction.
