Metacritic reviews

Moore has marshaled what's on the record and off into a stinging indictment of where we're going. In a multiplex filled with Hollywood cotton candy, we need him more than ever.

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. [28 June 2004, p. 108]

More often than not, Moore 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. At the very least, this approach undercuts the effectiveness of Moore’s own case.

A brisk and entertaining indictment of the Bush Administration’s middle East policies before and after September 11, 2001.

If Moore is formidable, it's not because he is a great filmmaker (far from it), but because he infuses his sense of ridicule with the fury of moral indignation. Fahrenheit 9/11 is strongest when that wrath is vented on Bush and his cohorts.

While Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 will be properly debated on the basis of its factual claims and cinematic techniques, it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression.

The real problem with Fahrenheit 9/11 isn't that it attacks the current Republican administration, but that it does so clumsily and with poor focus.

That's the real problem with Fahrenheit 9/11: not the message, but the method… Moore’s default mode is overkill: he even notes that on the night before the attacks Bush slept on "fine French linen." Surely scratchy muslin wouldn't have stopped the evildoers.

Moore stays "on message" here from first shot to last. There is no debate, no analysis of facts or search for historical context. Moore simply wants to blame one man and his family for the situation in Iraq the United States now finds itself in…So the real question is not how good a film is Fahrenheit 9/11 -- it is undoubtedly Moore's weakest -- but will a film help to get a president fired?

Pic fails to provide any hard facts or make any incriminating connections that a reasonably informed person doesn't already know about, so intellectually Moore is largely preaching to the converted in this blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet.