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The film details Moore's attempt to get an interview with GM head Roger Smith to show him what he did to Flint. Instead, Moore is given the run-around as he is informed that Smith is out, unavailable, or busy.

Undaunted, Moore points his camera at the people of Flint to show us the viewers what GM did to Flint. We are shown a man who suffered a mental breakdown after losing his job. We are shown a spaced-out woman who has formed a most interesting business to ward off unemployment. We are treated to pictures of the upper class living in complete oblivion to the poverty surrounding them ("Get a job!" one woman informs Moore). We are informed that the crime rate has skyrocketed in Flint since the plant shut down. But not to worry, this provides a new source of employment. Laid-off employees can now get jobs as security guards locking up their former co-workers.

A few scenes that really stood out in my mind: One was the way the sheriff goes from house to house evicting people with a bored expression on his face. When Moore questions him about how he feels about doing this, the sheriff looks completely baffled. Instead, he talks about how he is looking forward to his upcoming holiday. Doesn't he realize he's on camera? Another scene that stands out, the people of Flint trying to offset unemployment by developing a theme park dedicated to celebrating Flint's GM heritage. When the park fails to attract tourists, the people are left looking pretty stupid.

There's also that scene where Ronald Reagan shows up to treat the unemployed workers to pizza and give them a lecture about finding employment. He then forgets to pick up the check.

It's important to realize that GM didn't close the plant in Flint because they were in an economic downturn, but because they didn't want to spend a little extra money keeping people employed. GM devastated Flint's economy so that the people at the top could get a little richer. Moore's film transcends being just a revenge comedy and becomes a stinging indictment of the dark side of capitalism.

You can't help but feel that Roger Smith would have been better off if he'd agreed to the interview. Instead, Michael Moore chose to point his camera at Flint, giving Smith a much more damning indictment than an interview ever could.

I'll be looking forward to seeing Moore's new film "Bowling for Columbine" when it's released in October. I hope its as good as this film.

Pulling the economic rug out from under the feet of the town and surrounding areas, the series of plant closings (or, more correctly as Moore observes, "plant relocations" as most of the production capacity was simply shifted south of the US border to lower-paid positions in Mexico), is so well-known that it is even a play scenario in the best-selling SimCity computer game series. The devastating impact of GM's decision and subsequent collapse of Flint's secondary economy, the shops and stores where GM workers spent their money, prompted Money magazine to name 'the town that [GM founder] Bill Durant built' the single worst city in which to live in the entire US.

Though singleminded (and simpleminded) in his analysis (Moore, the son of a union man, attributes GM's decision to plain corporate greed and 'fat catting'), Moore pulls off his 'hapless yokel' ploy in blue jeans, acrylic cap and untucked button-down shirt, wandering onto factory assembly lines and into the front lobbies - but no further than that - of the exclusive clubs that Smith frequents, coming face-to-face with both the bitter blue-collar folk who, some would argue, overpriced themselves out of their jobs by flexing labor union muscle at the bargaining table, and the priveliged, hopelessly out-of-touch family members of GM executives at ritzy parties and on the golf course.

Though it has been overlooked in the product description and in reviews sent in by other Amazon customers, Roger & Me presents a fascinating study of the dynamics of the collapse of a one-product economy worthy of being conversation fodder for any course in economics, urban dynamics, or the psychology of change. As city and state managers focus their attention on progressively peripheral problems, preferring to attack the readily visible symptoms of Flint's employment problem (such as crime, poverty and desperation), rather than the core employment problem itself, the city residents find themselves trapped in a downward spiral which they individually feel neither responsible for nor capable of correcting.

The city managers fund inspirational seminars and visits by second-tier celebrities to combat growing frustration as the people of Flint fight each other for the few available 'McJobs' offered by Amway, Taco Bell, the local Helmac lint roller factory, or even the business end of the hypodermic needle at the local blood plasma center. As the poverty-induced crime rate grows, the economy of Flint sees a 'dead cat' boom in gun sales, evictions and foreclosures, correctional officers, and U-HAUL rentals.

But the reason the city planners attribute to the increased crime rate? Not enough jail cells.

The sad story of Flint takes a turn toward the absurd as seen in laughably hokey tourism promotional videos and as Moore recounts the airheaded city planners half-baked schemes to turn Flint into a tourist Mecca by subsidizing to the tune of $13 million city dollars the construction of a luxury Hyatt Regency hotel and convention center (which quickly went belly up), a modern "festival marketplace" mall (which also quickly failed) and the crowning jewel, Autoworld, a $100 million dollar theme park whose bitingly ironic centerpiece was a walk-through scale model of downtown Flint in its economic heyday. Autoworld too closed its doors, less than 6 months after opening, and is now the site of the University of Michigan's Flint campus.

Moore's suggested reason why Flint's tourist dreams turned sour? "...some people just don't like to celebrate human tragedy while on vacation."

It should be noted that the movie contains episodes of adult language and a particularly disturbing scene when Moore visits a local woman selling rabbits for "Pets or Meat" (also the name of a short follow-up to Roger & Me), but these scenes are buried far enough into the film that any children present or anyone lacking a grim enough sense of satire will have long since lost interest and wandered away.

Anyone with even a passing interest in 'urban tragedies' such as this is highly encouraged to see this film and would also do well to look into books like Jay Forrester's classic but academic _Urban Dynamics_, or the more popularly oriented _The Old Neighborhood_, by Ray Suarez, _Changing Places_ by Richard Moe, or similar titles.