The Times Reviews Sicko

For the Times Online James Christopher, Chief Film Critic of The Times at the Cannes Film Festival, wrote a review of Michael Moore’s new film ‘Sicko’.

Michael Moore’s attack on the American health care system has the makings of a great West End musical…He films empty waiting rooms and happy, care-free health workers…What he hasn’t done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have. I’ve spent more hours than I care to remember in NHS hospitals vainly waiting for stitches or praying for the arrival of a midwife. There are no such traumas in Moore’s rose-tinted vision of our glorious NHS. He travels to Paris and discovers it’s even better over there…It’s a provocative piece of lunacy. But there’s a strong whiff of sanctimony about Moore’s mighty indignation. It draws the sting from his satire.