Featuring Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, and Janeane Garofalo. Unrated. Plays Friday to Wednesday, July 13 to 18, at the Vancity Theatre

Like previous efforts by Toronto filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk, Manufacturing Dissent is probably more interesting to makers of media than to its consumers. Certainly, Junket Whore and Citizen Black were meaningful to anyone in this business who has ever glommed onto a free lunch or worried about being vetted by an overly agenda-laden boss.

Here, however, the subject is Michael Moore, and therefore a wider appeal is assured. Although Melnyk (who appears on-camera) and Caine (who doesn't) start out as passionate supporters of the size-large American and his popular work, his repeated snubs for interviews during the busy lead-up to the 2004 U.S. elections cause them to question his MO. The project has the taint of sour grapes, but that doesn't invalidate all of the observations made by friends, enemies (like former ally Ralph Nader and critic Dave Marsh), and assorted others. (But why, exactly, is Janeane Garofalo in the mix?)

As for the filmmakers' contention that a Bush address "to the haves and the have-mores", as excerpted in Fahrenheit 9/11, was taken out of context, it is utterly meaningless; the importance of the clip is his smirk, not his audience. More serious is the notion, confirmed in Premiere magazine back in 1990, that Moore did, in fact, meet General Motors chief Roger Smith but left that information out of Roger & Me. Does that really change anything essential about the movie, however? As Manufacturing Dissent makes clear, MM is a showman first, and the fact that we need to laugh in order to challenge authority is well worth discussing–perhaps with Jon Stewart, over a brewski.

Overall, I found the movie roughly useful but remained disturbed by the title, which is a play on the influential Noam Chomsky documentary Manufacturing Consent. The point that Chomsky (who appears here briefly) and those Canadian filmmakers were making was that money and power allow the amoral to create an appearance of unity. Dissent, on the other hand, can be amplified, supported, and/or (most often) stifled. But it cannot be fabricated.

To imply that Michael Moore is part of or privy to machinery that is in any way comparable to Halliburton, Fox News, and the U.S. army is absurd on the face of it. The fact that the filmmakers are willing to rest their project's identity on a clever but misleading catch phrase undermines their accusations. In the end, picking apart one of the few truth tellers for his easily discernible weaknesses only serves to show how few there are.