User reviews

Muckraking documentary film making was becoming popular in the late 90s and 2000s. But before Morgan Spurlock and Josh Fox, there was Michael Moore.

With righteous indignation, he sets about to show the foibles and the abuses of power of the rich and powerful.

He is famously from economically depressed Flint, Michigan, as seen in his first movie, "Roger & Me". He has a very "in your face" style of interviewing people.

He has a strong point of view about his topics and edits the picture and music with strong juxtapositions to create informative and entertaining montages. Some might consider this editorial bias, but there are always kernels of truth.

Mr. Moore has a wicked sense of humor. Only Mr. Moore could take tragic situations and expose them for what they are: absurd.

I believe that we have no choice but to keep Mr. Moore on-the-job because his humor presents facts in a form that the ordinary guy can relate to and learn from.

This guy is a damn fine teacher who has found a way to spread knowledge and entertain all at the same time. His parents did a fine job with this young man.

The Awful Truth was a funny, radical left-wing and liberal left-wing political TV series by Michael Moore. I don't agree with Michael Moore about everything - indeed, there are things I disagree with many political people about - but I think we can all learn something from them, and in Michael Moore's case, have a laugh at the same time.

The part about the funding of political parties ("The People's Pimp") is my favorite part. I want everyone living in a capitalist "democracy" to watch it. I found it very funny, and at the same time, a very profound introduction to the way capitalist "democracy" works. Even if you know lots about how it works already, this is a funny and comprehensive summary of the reality, and memorable, too.

After 20 some years, it is perfectly clear that Moore hit all the right targets, and the points he made are still valid, the changes he proposed are still yet to be made.

TV Nation was excellent and his movies / books lacked bias and stated a case using ill-known facts, based on this I was interested to watch 'The Awful Truth'. Unfortunately 'The Awful Truth' (TAT) is boring and uncomfortable to watch - Instead of stating a case and bringing it to the attention of the right people mr.moore creates scenarios that are in bad taste in order to create humour. The main example is where he takes a dying man to the CEO of his insurance company but only a lacky shows up and moore harrasses the poor lacky confronting him with a dying man even though its obvious that the lacky has no power to resolve the problem. Anywho, he comes across as an annoying socialist rather than a social activist and engages in publicity stunts for individual cases rather than genuinely searching for a cause to research for viewer interest.

There are only two types of people who can dare to dislike the show: those who don't agree with the very basic premise that there might be a problem with the 'Greatest Country in the World' and are too stubborn to improve the things around them or call people/companies out for their hypocrisies, the second group of people were just too old to understand the genius of the show.

P.S. I'm sure the show has lent a lot of creative guidance to the work of recent comic geniuses as Sacha Baron Cohen & even Nathan Fielder.

Talk to anyone and you will find a mixed bag of opinions on this radical filmmaker's work. Some will literally hate Michael Moore for expanding the truth and others will love him for uncovering it. No matter which you feel, we can all agree that Michael Moore has done one great thing … he has changed the face of documentary film-making. He has kicked down the door for the possibility of others to release their 'unfundable' projects that studios now see as moneymakers because of Moore's success. He has introduced documentaries back into the mainstream cinemas, and perhaps our world is ready for it. I get tired of watching cartoons on the screen, and cannot wait to get my hands around a juicy documentary whenever it is released.

That is why when this series was released on DVD I immediately ran to buy it. Not only do you get some great Michael Moore moments, but also you get to see avenues of our society that we do not take a moment and look at. There is a lot of wrong in this world, and especially in America. Those that are not honest sometimes use to media to change their image and therefore giving us a false sense of security. Moore, in his short lived series, takes random ideas and sets them in motion. One of my favorites is the FICA for Congress sketches. I think I enjoyed it so much because it showed America's reaction to his idea. He was not alone in this battle, and we knew it.

As I stated before, Moore is not for everyone. He is for the open-minded individual that is not afraid to ask the question 'why'. This was a beautiful series that has made me happy to see on DVD. For those that cannot stand his longer films, this would be the perfect venue to view his topics.

I do want to say that no matter how you feel about his work, you must first see it before you criticize. Never judge a book by its cover, and never judge a wealthy politician. While we will think that life is best here in America, sometimes it takes a lone voice to point out the obvious. Michael Moore has accepted the challenge, and is forcing Americans to look up instead of burying our faces in our day to day activities. We have the power to change everything … let us do it!

Overall, this series was nothing short than Moore's brilliance in small snippets. I think this series should be on everyone's DVD must-see list.

Grade: ***** out of *****

When I was about 15 years old or so, I happened to come across a show on television called "TV Nation." I was completely enthralled by every episode I saw before my local station decided not to continue carrying the show, no doubt in favor of such quality shows as "Friends" or "Touched By An Angel." I thought that "TV Nation" was the best thing to ever happen to television, and I went out and watched as much Michael Moore as I possibly could.

So when the complete first season of "The Awful Truth" came out on video, I knew I had to watch every episode, probably more than twice. I was completely confident that Moore would once again delight and inform me as he did eight years ago.

I quite enjoyed the first episode, how to run a Witch Hunt and the invitation to the funeral. I think my favorite episode so far is the Beat The Rich/Soddomobile one-two knockout. Moore has always been brilliant at staging stunts to shock and embarrass.

But the more I watched the show, the more I noticed: that's all he does. He doesn't really try to change anything, bring any new information to light, or challenge anyone's viewpoints. His documentaries seem to serve as either efforts to upset industrial and capitalist giants or slaps on the back to people of like mindset. "Oh, I'm so glad we're middle class/Liberal/gay-positive, because upper class/Republican/fundamentalist people are so dumb!"

Being a middle class gay-positive liberal, I enjoyed every single episode of "The Awful Truth"s first season. I just wish it had a little more bite and merit as opposed to being a series of mostly impotent guerilla attacks on people and ideas that deserve more focused attention.

Many of the segments are difficult to watch, such as the voice-box choir or Moore's awkward conversation with Lucianne Goldberg, and that gives the show merit. If it was a comfortable show to watch all the time, it'd be a Liberal "60 Minutes." Moore gets to focus our attention on the bad points in America, and hints at the possibilities behind our cold impersonal modernity. At this he succeeds: the shock value of correspondents such as Crackers The Crime Fighting Chicken force eyes to focus on problems that everyone knows about but ignores whenever possible. I congratulate the man on a mostly successful effort and hope that he continues his crusade proudly and does not become a caricature of himself in later years. Rating: 8/10.

When I saw the first season of "The Awful Truth", I became totally engrossed. I didn't always agree with Michael Moore, but I enjoyed his humor and the way he tried to help the little guy. The First episode is the greatest of all when he helps a guy get coverage for a life-saving transplant. It has some low moments, but for the most part it was great.

The second season, quite simply, stinks. He became so caught up in trying to shock and thrill people, he seemed to spend more time attacking the wrong people in the companies. He goes from helping the little guy to hurting the very people he's trying to help. Just because they work in a company doesn't mean they know all. A receptionist won't know why the President of her company is not serving time in jail for his crimes. Also, while I admire him looking out for the little guy, you can't condone an illegal immigration just because their boss "retaliated". The boss should be punished, but does that mean their crime should be forgiven? There are usually good reasons for restricting immigration. If everyone was allowed in , the problems they were running from would probably just follow them here. Bad causes and dumb skits fill this season. I dumped my second season DVD after watching it, disappointed I wasted so much money. There were a couple good moments, but not enough to make it worth my while.

Conservative or liberal, if you get the chance to watch the First season, do it! It's great. As for the second season, unless you are an extreme bleeding heart liberal, you will probably just be disgusted like I was.

Michael Moore's short lived "TV Nation" gets a long awaited resurrection and make-over with "The Awful Truth" which demonstrates the true power and potential of television. Michael Moore is the documentarian behind "Roger And Me" and "The Big One" and author of "Downsize This".

The show aired in Canada for the first time on Sunday, May 16, 1999 at 8:30 pm EST and has already proved it's worth in less than thirty minutes. It's also hilarious, and funnier than anything that could ever be scripted.

Two segments were featured in this program, one dealing with mock Witch Hunts in Washington, but the more moving piece, focused on 34 year old Diabetic Chris Donahue, father of a 4 year old girl, whose health insurance company (or HMO if you prefer), Humana, rejected his claim for an operation for a pancreas transplant. Without the operation, he would surely die, and so Michael Moore came to his aid.

First Chris went to Florida's Palm Beach Post to place his own obituary. Then Michael invited Humana to come help the ailing man choose a coffin for Chris. Then he invited them to Chris' funeral party, with Chris displaying his bright red custom made T-shirt that read "I signed with Humana and all I got was this lousy t-shirt, but no pancreas". Then they had a rehearsal funeral outside Humana's offices. Finally, in less than a week, the company cracked, accepted the claim, thereby saving the man's life, and revised their policies on all claims for pancreas transplants.

With an incredibly moving moment to end the show on, the grateful Chris showed his appreciation from the studio audience with his family to a rousing standing ovation.

Do yourself a favour, catch this show, have a laugh, and watch an important crusader do what he does best, make slimy corporations very nervous, and improving the world a bit at a time.

Big-time Republican here. My friends all hate Moore. I like him.

THE AWFUL TRUTH, while not a consistently funny show, does have lots of laughs. I admire Moore for his ballsy approach to people. You see plenty of it in this series.

He makes his points (usually) and even though I don't agree with 90% of his tripe, I like the show.

My favorite show was when he put a Fica plant in an election. That's typical of something Moore would do; his sarcasm is over-the-top and it usually works well. Sometimes, there is way too much of it - but I'll take the bad with the good.

I'd like to watch another series like this by Moore. I hope he does another one day.

The just released "Complete First Season of The Awful Truth" a wonderful collection of mini-documentaries not unlike Michael Moore's earlier films "Roger and Me" and "The Big One" and his old show "TV Nation."

Highlights include a man inviting his HMO to his funeral, and a bunch of caroling tracheotomy victims. Moore's very funny, very smart, and very willing to make jokes in bad tastes in order to make his point. And very often, he succeeds.

This show is at once hysterical, shocking, and very important. A must watch for fans of Michael Moore and social activism.

Being a newer Michael Moore fan I was only recently tuned in to this show. Danish television who usually shows all kinds of reality crap these days somehow steered clear of this show - kinda typical, as I said, they only show fullblown tastewaster shows anyway, so I guess it isn't very strange..

Anyways, I totally enjoyed this. It's kind of a talkshow but not really. Michael Moore raving on in the same fashion as we know him from Bowling for Columbine, but about other issues - in short, taking a lot of society's fundamental problems and turned them around with a humours blink the eye....

I know a lot of Americans dislike Moore, but being an European I can only say that Moore's way of looking at his fellow Americans is a lot like how we europeans see the united states. This not being said to be hypocritical (sure we have our own problems..) nor racist or however you wanna turn it, but with a president like W., who can blame us.. BUT - that's a totally other review to be given once Fahrenheist 9/11 is released here in Denmark in August ;-)

8/10

Michael Moore is definitely one of the best communicators in this country comparable to the Dalai Lama, though in a different genre. Or perhaps not so different, after all. Isn't what he shows us all about compassion, share, justice, fairness, solidarity, tolerance, awareness, etc? And with the same soft and amused smile?

What strikes me most is his absence of belligerence and the sense of grotesque with which he can bring the most unjust, painful, violent or tragic issues to our consciousness. Including the consciousness of some of those responsible for thriving on people's misery.

In a country where freedom of speech is apparently granted to all, it is surprising how few people seem to have anything to say. Thanks to Michael Moore for having the courage to use and make good use of such a precious liberty. And let's hope that there are going to be more Michael Moores in the future. Great work. Bravo!

Mr. Moore, I can understand your anger with the NRA, greedy executives, and unsympathetic politicians. But is it really necessary to exploit children by making them into mini-Mikes, by having them stage protests for causes that they probably don`t understand. It`s not the message but the means you employ that angers me.

Yes, Micheal Moore was viewed as corrupt himself with his pseudo-documentary "Fahrenheit 911". So maybe he was having a bad year when he screwed up and fell into the same class of people who thought that the USA didn't really land on the moon.

But prior to that, in his second season of "The Awful Truth", Mr. Moore got his talent in a deserving spotlight. I especially enjoyed seeing his victims shy away from the camera, like in the episode where he exposed the Public Defenders Office in Nevada for sending 900 people to prison without a trial. Yep, without a trial. You gotta watch it to see the crap that a bureaucracy can pull on an unsuspecting person with regard to their rights.

I don't know why there was no season after his 2nd, but Moore did a good job at exposing corruption in his short-lived series "The Awful Truth".

And yes he did put his foot in his mouth with "911", but we can forgive him for that, because he has grown used to the idea of corruption.

Michael Moore is a pathetic fat *** that's wasting oxygen. He has diluted both himself, and every single one of his followers into believing all of his lies. I don't need to explain myself, read any website exploiting Moore's lies, the list is too long.

The reason America is considered so stupid, is because of idiots that believe him in the first place. Although, the biggest irony of them all, is that while he bad mouths capitalists and successful entrepreneurs about being greedy and cheats, while they may be, he is even worse. The number of books with fallacious information and movies he's sold, has made him just as wealthy, greedy and a liar.

Michael Moore is a hypocrite and deceives the generally stupid and vulnerable population. This man has no honor, loyalty, courage or integrity, things that I've learned and embraced in the Army for 10 years, protecting this country's freedom, something Moore will never comprehend.

Michael Moore is a roaring mouse in a world of corporate elephants. In "The Awful Truth", he highlights the abuse of corporate power towards the little people, the weak, and the marginalised, in a style that manages to be serious and funny at the same time. Moore is definitely in a class of his own, with the exception of the vast 'alternative press' that the media oligarchy would never put on air or publish.

Michael Moore takes his sharp sense of humor and his strong political opinions to the small screen to screw around with people who deserve nothing more than to be screwed around with. Ever since Roger & Me and The Big One and, most recently, Bowling For Columbine, Michael Moore has flogged the political world with their own hypocrisies, and doesn't even stop there.

Some of my favorite episodes of this show are ones like the African American Wallet Exchange, in which Moore publicly chastises the NYPD for their idiotic mistakes. One African American man was shot holding a cell phone, because the police thought it was a gun. In another even more sickening event, an African American man was shot in the chest and killed as he was pulling his wallet out of his pocket to show the police his ID. He was cooperating with them 100%, and they killed him. For this, the NYPD deserves nothing more than to be embarrassed in public and on television, and Michael Moore is just the man to do it.

I absolutely loved the scene in that show where Moore exchanges black wallets for bright orange ones, and then walks right up to NYPD officers with a poster-board with a gun on one side and a wallet on the other, quizzing the officers on which was which. Moore also hints at a lot of the things that he comments on in Bowling For Columbine as well as his incendiary Oscar acceptance speech at the 2002 Academy Awards. He confronts dozens of politicians and corporate bigheads on their greed and hypocrisy, and launches some of the most creative and original political campaigns in the history of corrupt politicians.

To the best of my knowledge, The Awful Truth only ran for two seasons, which is not nearly enough to have exposed all of the corruption and hypocrisy and greed that is infesting this country, so I really hope that Moore is able to get his TV spot back. But given the fact that he launched an enormously insulting show against his own network providers near the end of the second season, it's not hard to see why it's not aired anymore. But on the other hand, just the fact that his show is not on the air anymore is just more proof that he was exactly right all along.

Michael Moore is a man to watch, he has a lot of things to say, and while his dry, sarcastic humor may get old after a while, he is pointing out some things about our society that simply need to be pointed out and not ignored any longer. He may have damaged his reputation at the Oscar ceremony this year, but I am more than confident in his talents and his unique way of looking at and exposing the world, and hope to see more movies and TV shows from him in the near future.

I'm sick and tired of Michael Moore acting like human life is more valuable than money. Look, money makes the world go around; there are *billions* of people and most of them contribute nothing. Nothing!

Money has got me my beautiful trophy wife, my sports car, my trips to Europe, my tennis court, my three houses, etc. ,etc. etc. What has that slob that Michael "saved" from the HMO ever given me? Zip, that's what. El zippo.

Doesn't Michael realize the kind of money HMOs make off the death of people like that whining sicky he patted himself on the back for saving? If the HMOs were to pay for every little old operation every one of their whining patients wanted, what kind of money would be left for the investors?

Come on! We're talking MONEY here people! Get with the program.

I hope Michael Moore's career goes down in flames, because the more he is on the air, the more he hurts the interests of people like me.

Michael Moore whos nerdy overweight appearance is disarming wages a bloody campaign against a laundry list of liberal complaints. This show is innovative and original in its documentary/skits, but if you are looking for a real intellectual political debate, look elsewhere.

This is the definition of bleeding heart knee jerk liberalism. Michael Moore protests tobacco lawyers, even though of course our legal system is set up so everyone gets representation from someone. He protests Disney for employing people, he protests rich people not knowing the price of a super size at McDonalds, he protests executives getting high wages even though they are in extremely high demand. The list of unthinking unintellectual positions goes on and on.

While this show will test your political stand and ability to think beyond the immediate bleeding heart conclusions, it is also original entertainment.

Don't miss that first episode. They get a bit tiresome after that with a few exceptions. The Lucy Cam was an interesting approach to saving the 4th amendment of the Constitution. Repeats are scheduled regularly.