Capitalism: A Love Story

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

After watching the bailouts, the bank foreclosures and the Bernie Madoffs of the world dominate headlines, Michael Moore is mad as hell, and he's going to try to make you mad as hell, too.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The film's title is never explained. What does Moore mean? Maybe it's that capitalism means never having to say you're sorry.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Moore's fireball of a movie could change your life. It had me laughing with tears in my eyes.

Film Threat Elias Savada

He's preaching a story we must all hear. This is no fairy tale.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The symmetry doesn't work. Capitalism is an economic system; democracy, a political system. Perhaps Moore should have come out and said what he really wants to see us adopt: a democratic socialism.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Impassioned, informative and entertaining, if sometimes repetitive.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The real love story here is between Moore and his bullhorn.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This lively, infuriating and occasionally moving film certainly leaves you thinking, and there isn't a dead spot in it. That's the mark of a real filmmaker, not just a muckraker.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Capitalism lacks the surprising wit of “Roger & Me” and the sobering comparative journalism of “Sicko,” and it isn’t nearly as heartfelt as “Columbine,” which poignantly and repeatedly circled back to Moore’s beloved home state of Michigan.

San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli

No matter where you stand, there's no denying "Capitalism" is flat-out polemic wizardry.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

With mixed results, Moore singles out those who profit from the misery of American workers.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Vintage Moore, which means that it will enthrall many and enrage an equal number of viewers.

Premiere Mark Salisbury

With the global economic meltdown affecting just about everybody, the film is pertinent, hugely entertaining, and, above all, timely.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

At its best, Capitalism: A Love Story is a searing outcry against the excesses of a cutthroat time. At its worst, it's dorm-room Marxism.

The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young

This is a typical Moore oeuvre: funny, often over the top and of dubious documentation, but with strongly made points that leave viewers much to ponder and debate after they walk out of the theater.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Too bad its wide net ultimately results in diminishing returns.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Like most of his movies, Capitalism is a tragedy disguised as a comedy; it’s also an entertainment.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Moore's scattershot is a lot more interesting than some filmmakers' focus, and many of those individual parts are classic.

Slate Dana Stevens

There's something touching, even a little bit noble, about Moore's eternal willingness to serve as our nation's shame-free populist gadfly.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A freewheeling denunciation of the capitalist system that is often mordantly funny and, by lurching turns, scornful, rambling, repetitive, impassioned, mock-lofty, pseudo-lowbrow, faux-naïve, persuasive, tabloid-shameless and agit-prop-powerful.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

On one level: groan. On another: No one else seems about to make those arrests. The only thing that would scare Wall Street straight is the image of Michael Moore as the new sheriff in town.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

Moore's voice is weak and fuzzy, directed at a choir that should already know the words by heart.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Redundant for a filmmaker whose work has always dealt with the dismaying consequences of this country’s profit motive. Isn’t every Michael Moore film ultimately about capitalism? This one just has a more facetious title.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

At its best, this uneven work represents Moore at the peak of his argumentative skills.

Time Out New York David Fear

Delivers Moore’s usual grab bag of ironic kitsch, gotcha clips and infotainment-journalism.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Whether Capitalism matches "Fahrenheit 9/11" or underperforms like "Sicko" will depend on how much workers of the world are ready to unite behind the message.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

The tone is so smart-ass that it’s bound to put a lot of viewers into a default defensive posture.

The New Yorker David Denby

It’s a sad movie--funny, yet wounded and bewildered.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

Scattershot, lazy slice of agitprop, which recycles Moore's usual slice-and-dice job on corporations, while bobbing a curtsey to the current crisis.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Exhibits the weaknesses and the strengths of what has become a nearly foolproof formula for keeping viewers engaged.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

As a statement on capitalism or anything else, Capitalism: A Love Story is often embarrassingly simplistic, self-contradictory.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

This time the acclaimed filmmaker tackles an entire “ism” and, much like its ambiguous title, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore’s film is an unmethodical survey of a gargantuan topic, one that has only grown more so in the year since he began work on the project.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

By the end, when Moore presents himself as a lone crusader for justice and wraps yellow crime-scene tape around the AIG building, his reasoning is so muddled that he can’t distinguish an economic system (corporate capitalism) from a political one (representative democracy).

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

This is a love story, all right, but it has less to do with the flaws of capitalism than it does with Moore's unwavering fondness for the sound of his own voice, and for what he perceives as his own vast cleverness.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Shouldn’t Moore run his yellow crime-scene tape around the White House instead of Wall Street? Anyway, President Obama said this month that in cases where the government has fully sold its TARP bank holdings, it has gotten back its money plus 17 percent. Damn those capitalist barons, breaking into our treasury and filling it with their filthy money.