Sicko - Reaction

Michael Moore's entertaining, interesting, and surprisingly non-hysterical documentary about problems with the U.S.'s health care system, what caused them, and how other countries have solved similar problems. I like how he generally stayed off camera (especially in the first half), only narrating. His personality and cynicism comes through in this film, but they're not as overwhelming as in some of his others.

The movie takes a personal approach to its subject, interviewing many real people as it alternates between horror stories and tales of amazingly great health care systems. This approach, however, means that this isn't policy journalism because the evidence Moore compiles is anecdotal, however damning of the current system it may be.

The film advocates for publicly funded, universal, standardized health care--in some sense, universal humanitarianism.

The special features, mostly additional scenes and interviews, are like appendices.

Some reviewers complain his portraits of other countries are too rosy. I disagree; he's more focusing on what we do wrong than exploring other countries' systems in detail. He's showing that other countries don't have some of the same problems. Regardless of what hidden, different problems other countries have, it's clear their citizens take pride in their systems.