The last few months, my mom has been telling me to watch a film called "Where to Invade Next," and being the busy college student that I was, I brushed it aside and gave it no second thought. I didn’t know what it was about nor did I care enough to Google it.
But, now that I’m home for the summer, there was no escaping watching it. I’m not even going to leave anyone hanging until the end of this article with what I thought of it. Instead, I’ll just say it now. I spent the two hours of this film either laughing, in awe or on Google to do some fact checking and see if I could either move to or study abroad in some of the countries featured. It is a must-see film for the summer.
Heads up, the following may contain spoilers so read with caution. But if you’re like me and seem to spoil every thing you watch because you get too curious and need to know the plot and ending before it happens, then please read on.
A lot of people are unfamiliar with the film (or at least I was), but to put it simply, Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore sets out to find a way to make America great again. To answer your question, no, not in the same way Donald Trump wants to make America great. He heads out to Italy, France, Finland, Slovenia, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Tunisia and Iceland to “steal” some of their ideas and policies to bring back to America.
If you are a gung-ho patriotic American who thinks that America is undoubtedly the best country in the world, then I applaud your enthusiasm and urge you to take a step back and watch this film with an open mind because, spoiler alert, America has some work to do.
While I won’t spoil too much, I will tell you that after watching this film, I hope to get a job in Italy, send my future children to school in Finland, eat at a school cafeteria in France, learn history in Germany and if by the slim chance I ever go to jail, I hope to be in Norway.
Each country is totally different, yet it was very evident that they all have the same goal — to help one another, give the best quality of life possible and treat each other like human beings. In fact, some of the countries claim that they are just mirroring the policies America set up by the Founding Fathers. They implement our policy of “no cruel or unusual punishment” better than we do here.
Somehow we hit a bump in the road and have not been able to regain our footing. We have lost our way as a country, and that is pretty clear with our current presidential election. I’m almost positive that the leaders in other countries are not engaging in Twitter fights, and to be honest, I would prefer to live in a country that doesn’t do that.
While this film may be solely comedic, I think as a society in America we can actually learn a lot from other places all around the world. We don’t have to be this crazy, individualistic country that won’t change our ways or accept help from other places. We have the ability to stop the inhumanity and slowly regain our footing to really find a way to better ourselves and our country.
So check it out and form your own opinions, whether those may align with mine or be completely different. All I ask is that you open your mind to new ideas for just two hours.
Find out more about the film here.