MICHAEL MOORE’S BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE may have been flacked on CNBC tonight, but it sure gets panned by John Powers in the L.A. Weekly:

ONE OF THE MOSQUITO-BITE IRRITAtions of being on the left is finding your ideals represented in public by Michael Moore, whose ball cap, burgeoning belly and self-promoting populism have made him an international brand name. When his documentary Bowling for Columbine played at Cannes this May, it was received with wild enthusiasm — predictably so, for it seems to have been made to delight European intellectuals and anyone else who believes that America is a land of bloodthirsty yet comical barbarians. . . .

Although he’d have made a crackerjack ad man, he’s a slipshod filmmaker, and the movie quickly collapses, burying its subject beneath bumper-sticker rehashes of received ideas: the demonizing of black men, fear-mongering TV news, Canada’s progressive health-care system and the Bush administration’s partisan use of scare tactics. At once punchy and incoherent — Moore contradicts himself vividly every few minutes — the film has the scattershot shapelessness of a concept album made by a singles band. . . .

Does Moore really think that Osama bin Laden ever gave a damn what happened to Salvadoran campesinos? Does he really think U.S. foreign policy caused those two high school kids to gun down their schoolmates? Moore never says, but he does emphasize, that on the same day as Columbine, U.S. bombers dropped an especially heavy payload on Kosovo. So what? Absent any serious historical analysis, his implication seems to be that this country is incorrigibly murderous. You don’t know whether to be outraged or yawn.

Oh, I know.

(Via Matt Welch).