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Corporation, The
Zeitgeist Films


8.6

based on 28 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 29 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, and Milton Friedman

This feature documentary analyzes the very nature of the corporate institution, its impacts on our planet, and what people are doing in response. (Zeitgeist Films)

GENRE(S):	Documentary
WRITTEN BY:	Joel Bakan (also book The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power) Harold Crooks
DIRECTED BY:	Jennifer Abbott Mark Achbar
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: April 5, 2005 Theatrical: June 4, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	145 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Canada

Audience Award, World Cinema (Documentary), 2004 Sundance Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It’s coolheaded and incisive, a thorough and informative study of corporations, their origins and their place in the modern world.

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Over the course of almost two and a half fascinating hours, they make a cogent, compelling, powerful argument, and they also make a terrific movie.

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Riveting cinematic essay.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Cogent, scary and, at times, sickening.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The Corporation has better manners and a longer fuse than ''Fahrenheit 9/11.'' But the acerbic, sardonically illuminating Canadian documentary shares with its American cousin a certain bleak leftist glee in pursuit of its cause.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The Corporation takes great and successful pains to be as visually diverse and clever as it is intellectually provocative.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Powerful, infuriating, and ultimately sobering. Make an effort to see it.

Variety Dennis Harvey

A surprisingly cogent, entertaining, even rabble-rousing indictment of perhaps the most influential institutional model for our era.

Newsweek David Ansen

Smart, informative and lively polemic.

Empire Dan Jolin

What it covers is so fundamentally relevant, and its polemic so persuasively structured, it’s worth braving the runtime even if it could easily have been more concise.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

Takes one side, but it tries to offer hope that change can happen.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

One of the film's cleverest devices is a "Personality Diagnostic Checklist" that equates corporate "serial behaviors" - exploitation, deception, greed, lack of empathy and guilt - with the antisocial makeup of a certifiable psychopath.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

At its most effective, the movie is a chastening, sobering, and thorough work of film journalism, however shortsighted.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

An impassioned polemic, filled with information sure to break up any dinner-table conversation. Its fault is that of the dinner guest who tells you something fascinating, and then tells you again, and then a third time. At 145 minutes, it overstays its welcome.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Too short to tell the whole story. It is, however, a fast-paced, highly enjoyable and provocative introduction.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's good stuff: a non-fiction film on weighty issues that also manages to entertain.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

An informative, amusing and unnerving overview of the history and consequences of corporations.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Delivers its provocative message in the measured tones of a college professor -- yet there's no danger of falling asleep in this lecture.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The filmmakers are pretty nimble at filling the screen with snappy graphics and canny editing to keep you alert and amused.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

It's a powerful polemic in its own right, despite some maddeningly glib generalizations, a documentary that functions as a 2½-hour provocation in the ongoing debate about corporate conduct and governance.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A leisurely, never boring, grimly amusing, and not entirely hopeless disquisition on the contemporary world's "dominant institution."

TV Guide Ken Fox

Bakan's arguments are buttressed by entertaining clips culled from commercials, industrial films and, appropriately, monster movies.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The Corporation is a dense, complicated and thought-provoking film, but it simplifies its title character.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

With an over two-hour running time, these side issues come across as unnecessary weight and threaten to turn off the very viewers the filmmakers worked so hard and so ably to win over in the first place.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

As a clear, exhaustive and highly intelligent discussion of one of the most pressing issues of our time, it's a success. As a work of documentary, however, it's flawed by its failure to limit its scope (or at least pare down its material), by its strangely stylized narration and by its lack of a story.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Without a unifying authorial voice to tie it together, the film often feels shapeless and rambling, brought together by little more than free-ranging contempt for capitalism's excesses.

The Hollywood Reporter Richard James Havis

The film will still prove a tonic to those holding left-of-center views.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

This is another unhelpful screed, uncontaminated by sense or perspective, that preaches loudly to the choir.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Rudy S gave it a10:
Those who condemn it as some form of propaganda or completely partial fail to realize that this film attempts to give you one side of the story. The movie makes convincing arguments as to why the corporate agenda may not be sustainable. Criticizing the movie for not giving a pro-corporation side is condemning it for something it isn't meant to be. It's a critique of the corporate agenda and should be something people on all sides of the political spectrum should see. Even if you disagree with their positions view it at least to broaden your own view and understand the anti-corporate side of the argument while people who agree with this movie should examine the pro-corporate side.

Mike B. gave it a4:
About as impartial as Triumph of the Will, this mashup of lefty talking points will no doubt thrill the hearts of the choir to which it preaches, but it leaves the rest of us bored silly by its two-plus hours of unrelenting Chicken Little-ism. The politics are hopelessly naive--does anyone to the right of Noam Chomsky really think that the solution to our problems is just to turn the economy over to the government? There may be valid points tucked away in all the verbiage, but the treatment is so unrelentingly one-sided that you end up distrusting everything the movie puts forth. A couple of the incidents discussed would have been interesting if both sides got a fair hearing, but then, that wasn't the point, was it?

Kevin gave it a9:
Forget your standard-issue horror flicks, this film is truly the most frightening piece of cinema I've ever subjected myself to. The Corporation puts the fear of the Invisible Hand into the viewer, doing for capitalism what Jaws did for beaches.

Mark gave it a10:
Another must see! Open your eyes folks and be engrossed, scared and perplexed with this powerful film.

Dor J. gave it a10:
Excellent film. Thought the comparison to psycopathic traits very interesting. Film quite balanced. The book is very worth reading. Lots of sources, very detailed.

Mathew gave it a4:
As slickly made propaganda this film succeeds admirably. Those inclined toward an anti-corporate bias may well cheer and rally to the cause, barking out their "right-on" with each successively checked box of indictment. But, for those who hope to find an incisive thoughtful balanced piece of investigative journalism–one that might indeed convert those who are not so critical of 'the American way of doing business'–this isn't the film! Too slick. Too manipulative. Why, it's just like a corporate sales pitch.

Kevin C. gave it a9:
It amuses me that just after Ebert calls it too long, the very next reviewer says it's too short. As for me? I found it just right. I'm not a big fan of either Moore or Chomsky, but that doesn't mean they don't have good things to say here. Moore even gets - gasp - a little introspective and self-aware near the end. And beyond the story of corporations, there are so many smaller stories - Interface's, for example - that are so engrossing as to keep the movie moving along nicely. Well worth the time invested.

Corporation, The Zeitgeist Films

Corporation, The
Zeitgeist Films