NEW YORK - US critics gave a warm welcome to Michael Moore's caustic documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," praising the movie's scathing humor while voicing some reservations over the director's methods.

The reviews came as rival political activists stood poised to either boycott the film or turn out in droves for its national opening Friday, with liberal group MoveOn.org turning to the Internet to rally its troops.

"Informative, provocative, frightening, compelling, funny, manipulative and, most of all, entertaining," read USA Today's gushing review of Moore's polemic against the war in Iraq and the administration of President George W. Bush.

"Fahrenheit 9/11 is the year's must-see film," the national daily said, while questioning whether the unabashed bias of the documentary would actually change minds in an already polarized US electorate.

While acknowledging that Moore's latest piece of agitprop, which won the Palme D'Or at this year's Cannes film festival, could be "nitpicked and second guessed," The Los Angeles Times labeled the film "a landmark in American filmmaking (that) demands to be seen."

The movie opened in New York on Wednesday and can be seen across the country from Friday. It was initially, and very publicly, denied distribution in the United States by Disney, the parent company of Miramax, which financed it.

"With expertly deployed footage and a take-no-prisoners attitude that echoes that of his conservative betes noir, Moore has made an overwhelming film," the Times said.

"It is propaganda, no doubt about it, but propaganda is most effective when it has elements of truth, and too much here is taken from the record not to have a devastating effect on viewers."

Moore, an iconoclast and polemicist, has made no bones about his motive for making the film. "I would like to see Mr. Bush removed from the White House," he told the ABC television network last Sunday.

The New Yorker magazine found the film "incendiary and viciously funny" and "Moore's most powerful movie -- the largest in scope, the most resourceful and skillful in means."

But it also questioned the film's objectivity and its method of deluging the audience with allegations that are often difficult to sort out and evaluate.

"'Fahrenheit 9/11' offers the thrill of a coherent explanation for everything, but parts of the movie are no better than a wild, lunging grab at a supposed master plan," the magazine said.

New York magazine had similar criticisms, saying Moore's film was compromised by too many cheap jokes and a tendency to preach to the converted.

"More often than not, he goes for the guffaw, and as enjoyable as that can be, it falls short of producing the kind of devastating, in-depth analysis that might really challenge the hearts and minds of all audiences, left and right," it said.

MoveOn.org asked its liberal members to sign an online pledge to attend Friday's opening of the movie to counter a boycott drive being led by rival conservative group Move America Forward.

"It is an incredibly powerful movie that lays bare the cynicism and greed behind Bush's war policy," wrote MoveOn.org spokesman Eli Pariser.

"The astonishing and revealing footage in it has the power to change the course of the 2004 election," he said.

The liberal mobilization came after Moore this week slammed a campaign by Move America Forward to convince theater owners to pull the film, which the group said was anti-American.

"Its time to take action to stop Michael Moore's 'Bash America' film, Fahrenheit 9/11," the group said on its website.

Theatre owners reported receiving thousands of e-mails warning them not to screen the film.

"They said Michael Moore was a liar, that he was doing a political propaganda, that the facts were not true," John McCauley of New York's Loews Cineplex Entertainment told AFP.

But, McCauley noted, he had received around 3,000 e-mails in favor of showing the film compared to 1,000 against.

"We have had negative feedback saying that it would hurt us financially," said Jennifer Caleshu of the Little Theatre in Rochester, New York, adding that the theatre was undeterred.

The Motion Picture Association of America joined the fray Tuesday by slapping the film with an "R" rating requiring minors under 17 to be accompanied by an adult, a move Moore has slammed saying that Washington deems teenage soldiers old enough to die in Iraq.

© Copyright 2004 AFP

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