Inevitably, this is tricked out with Moore's all-too-familiar stunts... all of them subject to the (capitalist?) law of diminishing returns.

A barbed study of the American economy puts capitalism in the dock but somehow fails to convict.

The thesis that rapacious capitalism has horrific social consequences is credible and well illustrated, if hardly eye-opening to European viewers.

Unfortunately, these nuggets come with the realisation that, in the hands of a better filmmaker, such stories would have made a much more inspiring, and compelling, piece...