3.5 stars (out of 5)
Russell Brand is the centrepiece of this furious and sometimes funny call-to-arms doco (directed by the workaholic Michael Winterbottom), and while he could certainly be accused of ‘doing a Michael Moore’, there’s no doubt that he’s more user-friendly and less grumpy than MM. And, it could be said, cuter too.
But it’s this cuteness, as well as Brand’s wannabe-revolutionary celebrity, that this cheeky chap uses to his advantage here, as he kicks things off by speaking directly to camera about how there’s nothing to follow that we don’t know already. However, to be reminded of it all is genuinely infuriating and outrageous: how the gulf between the rich and the poor is ever-increasing; how the banks caused the GFC, taxpayers bailed them out with massive loans, they never repaid anything and then went on to screw us all further; and how (let’s name names) Apple, for example, pretends to have no money available to pay tax and is therefore, by some appalling magic, excused from doing so.
All these facts are stated by Brand himself in standard, pleasingly animated and hand-waving form, and by wisely keeping his controversial overuse of ‘big words’ to a minimum (although he does legitimately use ‘oligarchy’, which you really should look up if you need to), he manages to make the information accessible and understandable to everyone. And everyone should be horrified.
Russell also stages some Michael-Moore-ish or Chaser-ish stunts, some of which are most enjoyable, as he rings the doorbells of major tax-evaders, drives the streets of London shaming companies by megaphone and even gets told off by some coppers (fortunately they’re fans), but the strongest sequences have him chatting with ordinary ‘working class’ types (you know: real people). There are cleaners who work for the minimum wage or lower (and they’d have to toil for 300 years to earn what the execs in the same building are raking in), families with children who can’t afford universities (sound familiar?) and more, and they all say the same thing: the gargantuan amounts of money earned by the rich, and sometimes their actual employers, is obscene.
Perhaps the only real problem here is that much of Brand and Winterbottom’s film has a UK-centric focus, as they really should have widened their reach and had a look at that supposedly ‘classless’ British colony Australia, where the rich always pay their taxes and the government bravely ensures that the mightiest money-makers are held to account. Phew, that’s a relief, guv.
I Wake Up Screening 