No contemporary documentary director has as recognizable a formula as Michael Moore. Pick an issue, find a few sympathetic folks to tell tear jerking stories related to said issue; pick a boogeyman to shoulder the blame for the subject’s tears, and then hunt down that boogeyman and force him (I *think* it’s always been a him) to confront his own culpability. That’s the ultimate moment of a Michael Moore film, right? The part where the populist warrior confronts his ideological enemy (or, at the very least, a symbol of his ideological enemy) and either reduces him to a simpering idiot, or gets the camera crew forcibly ejected from the building?

At first, Sicko comes off as the ultimate distillation of the Michael Moore formula. At times the filmmaker even seems to be pushing his “regular dude” persona into the territory of self-parody. The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott notes the “theatrical faux-na