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best movie i've ever seen.

A Masterpiece!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

What does one do when one makes a bucket load of money from a movie were you whinge and whine about how progress has destroyed your home town, and you spend an hour and a half fictitiously chasing the CEO of a major corporation and make it appear on camera that he does not want to talk to you? - More of the same.Basically this film is about a book tour where Michael Moore travels across the United States holding signings and conferences about a book that he wrote called Downsize Me, and spends all of his time criticising Corporate America. Now don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of criticising corporate America because the nature of the system which is based on greed and on lining the pockets of a minority to the expense of the majority is something that needs to be criticised – it is just that I don't like it when Micheal Moore does it because it is becoming clear that the only reason he is doing it is because people pay him money to watch his movies and to read his books.The question that I have is what does Michael Moore do with all the money that he makes from these enterprises? I know I won't be able to ask him because he doesn't like to give interviews in exactly the same way that the CEOs he chases allegedly don't like to give interviews. I suspect the reason that he doesn't like to give interviews, and the reason that CEOs don't like to give interviews to him, is because they do not trust him and they do not know how he is going to manipulate the stock footage that has been taken of those interviews to his own advantage.Anyway, the whole idea of downsizing and moving to Mexico (or other developing countries) is a double edged sword. Manufacturing in America (and in Australia) is a dying industry because it is much cheaper to move it overseas. Further, the costs of setting up factories are so much cheaper because the laws that surround workplace rights and health and safety do not exist, and without tariffs, companies are simply going to behave like water, and that is move to where it is cheapest. Personally I do not like it, but that is the way it is happening. Basically in the modern democracy the unskilled labour is moving to the service industry, and skilled labour is going to a knowledge base (though workers in the construction industry are still needed because you simply cannot off shore them).Once again, it is difficult to tell what is true and what has been manipulated in this film. For instance, it is quite clear that the interview with Phil Knight has been edited to bits to simply show us that he does not care about the conditions of the workers in Indonesia, and that he does not want to open factories in the United States because people in the United States do not want to make shoes. However Knight is right when he says that people who are unemployed will say they want to do any job, yet it is also true that it is so much cheaper to employ people in Indonesia and import the shoes than to pay people in the United States to do it. Unfortunately, it is not necessarily the CEOs and executives that are doing this but the super funds and managed investments that are forcing the companies to do this because they want their returns and us, the people who hold the shares and who have financial stakes in those funds what our returns as well.

The Big One fails on the two levels it aims at: political consciousness and entertainment.First the entertainment level. Michael Moore's "documentaries" are meant as half entertaining, half political much like his show "TV-nation" (BBC). The entertainment often takes the shape of embarrassing his enemies in front of the camera by confronting them with suggestive questions for which they are usually unprepared. This can be funny but a lot of times I just felt sorry for the people who were confronted by his blunt questions. Often it was like the Charlton Heston visit in Bowling for Columbine which was the weakest part of that documentary. I thought the majority of the DVD was boring and lacked structure. The first half I was wondering, what is this about? The Big One was all centered around Michael Moore's book tour, promoting his latest book. Who even cares about that stuff? I wanted to see him confront high-level executives from large corporations or government officials, with sharp questions, but I got to see none of what I had hoped for. The other level The Big One fails at is political consciousness. It lacks depth. The corporate management people he visits are always lower management (except for the Nike official), who don't have any authority on strategic decisions that force their plants to shut down locally and move to cheaper countries. Despite that, these people show themselves quite capable of defending their company's policies with rational arguments: they need to stay competitive in their market to survive, they are not charity after all. But Moore never really listened to them or even thought about their arguments. He just tried to keep waltzing over them repeating cheap suggestive questions like "how do you live with yourself" etcetera. Moore did have a point criticizing the government paying welfare to companies but failed to focus on one simple subject. He could have focused on just that one issue, or the Nike factories in Asia, or the factories that were shut down. That way he might have been able to put the finger on the REAL problems in all those cases, but I doubt it. I'll give it my two cents:-The main problem with companies that downsize is that they don't hurt the people that can take the biggest blows because they make the most money in those companies: the UPPER MANAGEMENT.-The other problem with companies that fire their people despite profits is they usually communicate badly and don't give enough time and compensation to the people that are sacked. The "right to have a job" is an outdated communist notion. Let these people look for a new job, just help them finding it!-Having factories in third world countries, even when they have a dictatorial regime, is NOT "unethical". These people would be off much worse without those factories. In fact in those countries most people are jealous of the people that do work in Nike factories because they can help support entire families. The people that have to get by with their own farms and other "native" means of making money have far more miserable lives and have to work even harder. The only thing that I would agree on is that Nike should hire more people and let them work less hours (keeping their costs the same), while improving working conditions.If you like Michael Moore: Fahrenheit 911 and particularly Bowling for Columbine are far superior. Despite their flaws (often presenting fiction as fact) they are entertaining and serve a purpose in broadening people's perspectives by displaying a different view on the subjects of terrorism and violence than most of the media.

Yet more excellent work from documentarian Michael Moore as he hits the road in 1996 for a 47-city tour to promote his new book "Downsize This". Funded by Random House Publishing, with that company having no idea that Moore is not just going to sign books, the all-world film-maker pulls no punches as he gets to the heart of corporation down-sizing just as some of the biggest money-makers in the U.S. start to have all-time record high profits. We see regular folks laid off by monsters like Pay Day (the candy bar company), Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Johnson Controls and Pillsbury. National corporations leaving the U.S. to pay lesser fees to employees in third-world countries is explained in great detail and Moore even has a unique conversation with Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike (also the only CEO brave enough to verbally spar), and needless to say Moore comes out looking much better than his opponent. "The Big One" shows the lack of political choices for the general public (the film makes it blatantly clear that the Clinton/Dole race of 1996 was a no-win vote) as blue-collar, middle-class workers fall in the work-place due to the lack of government control on power-mad corporations that only look at the bottom line and constantly talk about competition in their industry (this makes the big-wigs look even sillier in reality). The main theme from "Pulp Fiction" late during Moore's run of metropolitan areas ends up setting the overall tone of this exceptional documentary feature. 5 stars out of 5.

The Big One remains my favorite Moore film yet, even though I found `Bowling for Columbine' to be more `well-made' (i.e. – slick). What I find The Big One, a documentary shot during Moore's book tour for `Downsize this' has is more humor, more heart and less histrionics. While Moore continues to champion for the little guy against big corporation who have wronged them in the name of Capitalism, there is none of the preachiness that can be interpreted within Bowling for Columbine. Instead, Moore follows in the tradition of `TV Nation' and his eventual brilliant Bravo/BBC series `The Awful Truth' and makes his point with some humor for good measure. It doesn't surprise me that Bowling for Columbine was more criticized and hit America's radar screens a lot heavier than this relatively unknown film. The Big One's content and crusades against Corporate America are less inflammatory than addressing gun control and attacking Moses. Rather, The Big One comes across as Michael Moore `light.' Despite the fact that I relish in watching Moore take on the guys that I can't, I still enjoyed this one the most so far, probably because in my opinion, Moore's intelligence and heart are captured best in this film above any other and remind us that he is someone who isn't just going for publicity, but is also someone who really does do what he does to help people.--Shelly