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100Moore's best movie, and one of the most blisteringly effective polemics and documentaries ever.
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Documentary reaches an exalted level of filmmaking. It explains the very fabric of American society.
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100This volcanically funny and seriously scary look at America's obsession with guns is meant to shake us up good. And it does.
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90Rambunctious, disturbing, often hilarious new documentary.
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90The sparks fly thanks to Moore's patented blend of curveball research, expedient juxtaposition, genuine satire and bottomless chutzpah.
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88Both hilarious and sorrowful.
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88That broad range of subject matter is indicative of the messy, meandering structure of the movie. But if Moore fails to tie this unwieldy movie into a lucid thesis, at least every tangent he chases down has its own payoff.
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88Moore's roving essay feels even more urgent now than it did when the jury had to make up an award to honor it at the Cannes film festival in May.
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88Imperfect as it may be, Bowling for Columbine is riveting stuff.
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83Impressively reframes the gun-control debate in terms that advocates of both sides might find fruitful, but Moore doesn't do anything to shed his reputation as a snot.
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80Often uproariously funny, even though much of its queasy power comes from its acknowledgment that some matters are too horrifying to be washed away with cheap laughter, or packaged into soundbites.
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80When he follows his nose -- say, by tracing his own connections to Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters -- he implicates himself in what he hates and fears, and he emerges as a wounded patriot searching for a small measure of clarity. [28 October 2002, p. 119]
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75Moore turns the camera on himself too often for comfort, but he provides an eye-opening array of facts and revelations.
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75Moore brilliantly unmasks the inanity of the arguments used in the debate over gun control in America. He then undermines himself by leaping into the blame game without supporting his central thesis, that the media is what makes teens like the ones at Columbine turn around and shoot up their schools.
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75Irreverent, provocative and provoking.
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75Moore continues another one infinitely more valuable -- the proud line that extends right back to Mark Twain, embracing all those satirists so enamoured with America at its best that they won't stand silent for America at its worst.
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75At its best, the movie powerfully indicts our violent history. A montage of bloody U.S. interventions in foreign affairs over the last half-century, most overthrowing elected governments we didn't like, left me shaken.
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75Even Moore's target ticket-buyers are likely to squirm with concern, unsure of who the real weasels and idiots are in this large, unkempt, rambunctious country of ours.
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70It does get K-Mart to pull handgun and assault ammunition from their shelves after two Columbine survivors show up at corporate headquarters with Moore's camera crew in tow and bullets bought for 13 cents apiece at a K-Mart store still embedded in their bodies.
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70It’s a welcome addition to the national debate, which while not always on the money, is consistently thoughtful, smart and thoroughly satisfying.
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70Moore's concern about issues is genuine, and his showboating technique is often entertaining. But he is not the most organized person in the world, and there is a scattershot randomness about this film that is both its essence and a source of frustration.
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70Disturbing, infuriating and often very funny film.
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70Moore's best film to date is this comic and grimly entertaining reflection on America's gun craziness and why we kill one another.
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67Fun and informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking.
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60Something appalling about the way he turns to the camera with a look of sorrow: Michael Moore as a suffering Christ. It's an insult to his own movie, which at its considerable best transcends his thuggish personality.
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60Moore provides a rather rambling discourse of causality, which includes racism, white flight and Africanized bees.
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The only thing wrong with Bowling for Columbine is Moore himself.
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58It's vintage Moore: on one level the courageous act of a gutsy journalist, and, on another, a callously unfair and self-serving spectacle that makes Moore seem like a big bully, and puts his audience into the position of a vigilante mob.
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50Shallow and one-sided.
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50It seems to have been made to delight European intellectuals and anyone else who believes that America is a land of bloodthirsty yet comical barbarians.
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50It's poorly structured, a half-hour too long, and devotedly fixated on the filmmaker's persona.
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50Where Bowling for Columbine is at its most valuable is in its examination of America's culture of fear as a root cause of gun violence.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 89 out of 128
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Mixed: 4 out of 128
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Negative: 35 out of 128
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