generic_trait Take the word America out of the title of this movie and you wouldn't have half of the criticisms of it. The reviews that I have read of it have obviously not come from people who have seen this movie, and rather from people who feel compelled to regurgitate what their political science teachers have taught them about this country as a review for a movie they haven't seen. I say this not because I disagree with the reviews (which I do) but because the main user comment on IMDb doesn't have one line that pertains to the content of the movie. Rather, it gives us a 5 paragraph style essay about the importance of balance in your views of this country. "You have to look at the good and the bad". And by the way, jingoism pertains to an expression of nationalism in regards to a belligerent foreign policy. Thus a movie strictly about people in a specific country could not be jingoistic unless those people were saying "WE WILL CONQUER THE WORLD!!!" So you could call the song "Let's Drop the Big One Now" by Randy Newman jingoistic, though I think it's supposed to be satirical, but this movie could not be. So stop using buzz words and concentrate on reality please.If you had actually seen the movie you would realize that it could have been about people who live in Australia or Germany or on the fricken Moon! It's not about nationalism. In fact I did not hear one person say "America's the greatest country on earth and every other country is crap!".It's simply an uplifting movie about people who enjoy life, and what obstacles they have overcome to achieve the level of happiness that they have grasped. None of them, not one, said anything nationalistic. But I have heard people say things like this "I've been broke, but I've never been poor." And I haven't seen any flag-waving. But I have seen a guy with severe cerebral palsy compete in a wheelchair race. I didn't see anything that made me happier to be an American, but I saw a lot of things that made me happy to be alive. Overall it strikes me as a movie that Errol Morris (Mr. Death)or Chris Smith (American Movie) would have made before they sold out and decided to join ranks with Michael Moore and make their own versions of his movies. And what I really liked about this movie was that it was a pure documentary. Meaning, that it didn't stretch reality, it merely presented a glimpse into these people's lives. It didn't give twisted statistics, or half truths. It did what a good documentary is supposed to do, show subjects in their environment and let them tell their story. through their actions and words. I feel so sad for the people who approach this movie with the hatred that I have seen displayed on this board. It is simply indicative of a greater pessimism, not just towards America, but towards life in general. My advice to anyone who is reproached as a "nationalist" for liking this movie is this, ask the person who is admonishing you whether they have seen it or not. My guess is that the vast majority of the people on this site have not. Otherwise they would reserve their bile for a movie that actually does express a "jingoistic" (you fricken idiots) attitude towards America, if they can find one.

wdew23 How full of hate and despise one must be to interject politics into this movie. This film displays true accounts of American individuality from very different points of view. This is the most free society on earth! Those who continuously wish for socialism and government restrictions on everything including corporations, please find a friendly European country to take you in. This is a refreshing look at Americans for Americans. I saw nothing about Democrats or Republicans, only Americans. I guess it is true that some political affiliations do hate America. Just sit back and watch real people. It seems that a positive attitude toward anything American seems evil or corrupt. I for one believe America is still great. See this film!

mcwagoner_1999 In a world that seems so cynical, so jaded, this film shows why America is and has been different than any other country in the world. The film doesn't need chase scenes, it doesn't need sex, it doesn't need to probe the pores on a man's skin to try to find the flaws. What it should do, is to help us remember that this is the ONE AND ONLY country in which you can follow your dreams, whatever, they may be and you have a chance, a good chance, to fulfill them. Some reviewers want to see the warts. Why? Obsticles are what get in the way when you take your eye off the goal. Michael Moore films are what you get when you hate your own country, all the people in it and are only capable of telling half-truths. Quit whining, quit asking others to do everything for you, get some of that old fashioned American guts and optimism. Get off the couch and follow your dreams, you can do that. Europeans (and others) can't.

jdesando Tired of Michael Moore's crybaby `Fahrenheit 9/11'? Longing for some good old American hooray? Then Walt Disney Pictures, who refused to distribute Moore's film, coincidentally brings you `America's Heart and Soul,' several vignettes about Americans who live freedom by doing extraordinary things from mountain climbing to making ice cream. The theme seems to be that our great country provides us with the opportunity to do what we want if we have the passion to do it.The photography is glorious: Cowboy Roudy roams the range amid mountains only lucky people like my daughter Gabrielle can see daily (She recently moved to Wyoming with her family). Director Louis Schwartzberg (founder of stock footage firm `Energy' and additional cinematographer for `Koyaanisqatsi') has an eye for the sweeping aerial shot as well as the intimate close-up. The characters are eccentric but often daring and graceful: Mountain-dangling dancers defy gravity to gavotte with it; a Coloradoan bowls incendiary balls into old TV sets in front of admiring, obviously otherwise bored fellow sufferers of the dreaded winter. A Vermont farmer tells you how to avoid the Monday morning blues: Work seven days a week!The freedom theme is aided by the subjects' passion to do what they choose: A gospel singer rears her six siblings after her mother's death, and those adults now call her Mom (Just listen to them sing in the choir, and you might rethink your agnosticism). Her rewards are more than six fold. If you approach `America's Heart and Soul' as a love song to the best that America can be, you should be able to balance it with Moore's diatribe against the neocons. In either case, there is no balance: Schwartzberg neglects the poverty or, say, lack of health insurance many of the participants experience; Moore refuses to acknowledge any of President Bush's accomplishments. Both visions are free to be expressed, and we are free to debate about them. But Oscar Wilde warns, `To be entirely free and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life that we realize at every moment.' The distribution of both films is a tribute to the freedom they wish to protect and the difficulty of achieving it in any lifetime.