- Actors: Michael Moore, James Blanchard, James Bond, Pat Boone, Rhonda Britton
- Directors: Michael Moore
- Writers: Michael Moore
- Producers: Michael Moore, Wendey Stanzler
- Format: PAL
- Language English
- Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: 15
- Studio: Warner Home Video
- DVD Release Date: 15 Mar 2004
- Run Time: 91 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00013KCLS
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 17,873 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Made in 1989, Roger and Me is a loose, smart-alecky documentary directed and narrated by Michael Moore. Here for the first time, the man who won unexpected Oscar glory with Bowling for Columbine exposed audiences to his devastating wit and a working-class pose. When his hometown is devastated by the plant closure of an American corporate giant (making record profits, one should note), the hell-raising political commentator with a prankster streak tries to turn his camera on General Motors Chairman Roger B Smith, the elusive Roger of the title, and the film is loosely structured around Moore's odyssey to track down the bigwig for an interview.
While Moore ambushes his corporate subjects like a blue-collar Geraldo Rivera, a guerrilla interviewer who treasures his comic rebuffs as much as his interviews, his portraits of the colourful characters he meets along the way can be patronising. The famous come off as absurdly out of touch (Anita Bryant appears for some can-do cheerleading, and hometown celebrity Bob Eubanks tells some boorish jokes), and the disenfranchised poor (notably an unemployed woman who sells rabbit meat to make ends meet) all too often appear as buffoons or hicks. But behind his loose play with the facts and snarky attitude is a devastating look at the victims of downsizing in the midst of the 1980s economic boom. This portrait of Reagan's America and the tarnish on the American dream comes down to a simple question: what is corporate America's responsibility to the country's citizens? That's a question no-one at GM wants to answer. --Sean Axmaker
DVD Description
In 1989, Michael Moore, winner of 2002’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award and Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Bowling For Columbine, triumphantly burst upon the American moviemaking scene with Roger and Me, a hilarious, penetrating forerunner of the independent film movement.
Moore doggedly and hilariously tried to do what every working stiff dreams of: talk to the man at the top. His efforts to meet General Motors Chairman Roger Smith and persuade him to visit Flint, Michigan, frame a film that uses humour to devastating effect. Roger and Me champions people over profits and slyly lampoons corporate America as it shows how the Flint folks cope with economic setbacks.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Winner by Michael Moore,
By A Customer
This review is from: Roger and Me [1989] [DVD] [1990] (DVD)
Of course this is Moore's first movie, and although it was made on a very low budget, I thought it was just as great and touching as >Bowling for Columbine<. It was fascinating to follow Moore on his quest to get an interview with Roger, the untouchable and heroic (at least to Wall Street) CEO of General Motors, who was responsible for closing the GM plant in Flint, Michigan and 6 others across the United States (so that, for example, other factories could be opened in Mexico that would exploit the cheap labor forces). Moore not only shows us how the blue collar workers were affected by the lay-offs, but he has also managed to get the opinions of some members of the upper class of Flint. So, on the one side, you've got all these people that are getting thrown out of their homes because they don't have a job and can't pay the rent, and on the other side of town the rich are playing golf and throwing parties, condemning the unemployed for being lazy or not innovative enough. With some examples, Moore demonstrates that this kind of thinking is indeed wrong to a large extent; many people of Flint did try to find other ways of making a living, but certainly the means and possibilities available in a city that had just had the rug pulled out from under its feet are extemely limited. The film culminates with a Christmas speech wherein the speaker expresses how important it is for American citizens to be charitable and show good will to their fellow men, while yet another unemployed mother and children get kicked out of their house in Flint. An awesome documentary!!!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Megalomaniac Michael Moore creates more heat than light,
By Miami (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Roger and Me [1989] [DVD] [1990] (DVD)
Roger and Me (1989) is now a frankly stupid documentary and one of the worst examples of "investigative" journalism but it did create a stir at the time of its release.It begins as Michael Moore's video diary and scrapbook of life, as we're introduced to the man, his memories of life growing up in his home town of Flint, Michigan, and how depressing life has now become since General Motors made thousands of factory workers redundant. We are then treated to scenes involving Michael Moore attempting to enter General Motors HQ and speak to Roger Smith, the CEO of General Motors laying people off. Naturally Moore runs into security guards and treats them with disdain. He then attempts to ambush Roger Smith at various events and places he is known to retreat to, and interlaced with these scenes are other scenes of Michigan life such as bailiffs knocking on allegedly former workers' doors and evicting families for non-payment of rent and scenes of parade and bustle as elites go about normal life (e.g. town politicians with no introspection about how the layoffs have ruined people's lives and Miss Michigan refusing to be speak ill or lay blame in relation to General Motor's lay offs). There is a lack of investigative journalism here sadly. Moore's explanation for the layoffs (a.k.a. rant) comprises a string of personal allegations against the CEO concerning corporate greed and it is overwhelmingly not-investigative or enquiring because his assertions and links are glued together by anti-corporate bias and emphasis on choice without any serious analysis of happenstance or determinism in business. I agree there is an element of choice but General Motor's arguments were that it wouldn't survive otherwise and it will do what it takes. We live in a cruel world, American politics and corporatism is an even crueller world and the workers know it. Watching the young Michael Moore's obsessive attempts to gain an interview with the CEO of General Motors is basically what passes for entertainment in this film. That may be entertaining and it is certainly entertaining seeing Michael Moore being palmed off and given the brush by many people inside General Motors, but it is a misleading documentary because apparently by all accounts he did in fact have another more extensive interview in the end with Roger Smith (not shown) and I think it's not justifiable that Michael Moore used deception to infiltrate General Motors and film workers. Documentaries have moved on a great deal since 1989 and have become a lot more journalistic and revealing and insightful. This documentary is the perfect example of the impotency of Michael Moore-like journalists who, in their quest for film stardom and setting up corporate execs, create more heat than light (though I totally understand how workers would have felt and I am sure they couldn't give a toss ...hence I think the film is okay as anti-corporate propaganda).
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The little known epilogue,
By
This review is from: Roger and Me [1989] [DVD] [1990] (DVD)
Admittedly, this film would appeal more to residents of the US. But it is important as it first brought Michael Moore to prominence. It may not be generally known that there was an epilogue "Pets or Meat" (about 25 minutes long) which appeared on TV a couple of years later. It shows what happened to some of the principal actors since the original movie was shot. As you can guess from the title, the Rabbit Lady features prominently. Others figuring in it include the sheriff and the Amway lady.
This epilogue does not appear on DVD. It may not deserve a DVD by itself, but would certainly have been an useful extra on the "Roger and Me" DVD. The good news is that it can be downloaded, if you know where to look on the internet.
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