“Is this the great big penis competition?” enquiries someone in Michael Moore’s Where To Invade Next. It’s not a great big penis competition – this isn’t that kind of movie – but the firebrand filmmaker does draw some comparisons between America and Europe in his new doc. And Moore, judging by the film's new trailer, is much more impressed by what Europe has in its trousers as he travels round looking for things America might want to pinch.
Far from the Fahrenheit 9/11-style polemic the title might suggest, this is a more whimsical movie from the man who’s been annoying the powerful for nearly three decades. Here he roams the continent, visiting Italy, Finland, France and elsewhere, searching out things that America could improve on. The Italians, he discovers, get loads of holidays. French school kids get three-course lunches. Norway has a very smart prison system. French school kids get three-course lunches.
He takes a Stars and Stripes around as he goes, literally planting a flag in the things he thinks are worth appropriating. Think Vincent Vega’s awed discovery of the Royale with cheese in Pulp Fiction, only times a thousand.
Where To Invade Next is in UK cinemas from June 10.