He begins his journey in Michigan at a bank that gives out a free gun if you open a checking account. The bank keeps 500 guns in the vault and is a licensed firearm dealer. “Do you think it’s a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?” Moore asks. He asks with a straight face, and he gets a straight answer. But this scene is hilariously funny anyway.

There is something about Moore, an enormously round man, a typical Michigander in jeans and a baseball cap, sitting with a bank clerk answering questions about his mental health history so he can pass the background check — which takes no time at all — that is so normal and outlandish at the same time you want to laugh and cry.

It is a good thing that Bowling for Columbine begins with a laugh, because much of what Moore explores isn’t funny at all.

Even when the film makes jokes and loudly and hilariously demonstrates how absurd our “culture” has become regarding the connection between guns and violence, the humor grows darker as the film progresses.

Most of Bowling for Columbine makes you want to weep, not laugh. Even when Moore doesn’t get his numbers quite right, his basic sense of things is alarmingly right on the money. And the mix of the almighty dollar and our politics is a powerful theme in Bowling for Columbine.

Moore asks why do we have so many gun deaths in this country. He destroys the usual harangue about rock lyrics, video games, drugs, unemployment, broken homes, and other more overtly racist arguments by making fun of them, pointing out how many other countries have those same problems but don’t have the same problem with gun murders.

He travels to Canada looking for answers. He wonders why Canada, with 7 million guns in a country that has 10 million households has only 165 gun deaths, and in the United States we have over 11,000 gun deaths. He asks Canadians and their answers, while funny, make it clear that they think we are all a bunch of angry, dangerous lunatics.

Moore’s montage of our foreign policy of the last 50 years is even more embarrassing and shameful. Though his numbers are inaccurate in some cases, which weakens his argument and is very frustrating, he isn’t wrong. Our record of “helping” other countries is dismal. If you want to know why other countries view the U.S. with suspicion, a careful review of our foreign policy makes it obvious why we are not always a welcome presence.

At home in Michigan he investigates the circumstances surrounding a particularly tragic shooting of a young child. The courage of the prosecutor to view this case with compassion and not succumb to knee-jerk rabble-rousing surrounding it is inspiring. His comment that guns are much more of a problem in the suburbs than in the inner city surprises Moore. The prosecutor’s touching humanity is a direct contrast to the slippery evasion of Dick Clark who is tangentially related to the case.

The scenes involving the Columbine shooting and its aftermath are devastating all over again. The film takes it title from the fact that the shooters of Columbine went to their bowling class the morning of the shootings. Why doesn’t anyone suggest that bowling made them do it, Moore asks. With a young man who is a victim of the Columbine shooting, Moore takes his cameras to K-Mart (the store where the Columbine shooters bought their ammunition) and convinces them to stop selling bullets. One of their bullets is still in the wheelchair bound Columbine survivor.

Matt Stone, one of the “South Park” creators, grew up in Littleton, and the portrait he paints of how teens were treated at the school is chilling. His description of the culture of fear at the school fits nicely into some of the best arguments Moore makes.

Cataloguing the many fears, some of them completely irrational, that are everywhere in out society is fascinating. It is disappointing that Moore doesn’t explore this idea more thoroughly or make a connection between fear and a tendency toward violence. It is in his film personified by James Nichols, brother of Terry, who was part of the Oklahoma City bombing. James sleeps with a gun and is in equal measure deeply frightening and pathetically unhinged.

Some of the faults of this now Academy Award-winning documentary were echoed in the rant Moore gave when he accepted the Oscar for his film. Moore wants so desperately to be heard he loses focus and dilutes his message. He is so angry about the stupidity, venality, greed, dishonesty and hypocrisy that surrounds our righteous view of ourselves that he lashes out in all directions, taking obvious cheap shots. He would be less easy to dismiss if he could use some of his marksman’s skills to hit a few genuine targets directly. In the most practical terms, if you don’t use part of your time at the podium to express gratitude to the Academy and the people who made your film possible before launching into a scattershot scolding of everything that angers you, why should anyone listen to you?

In Bowling for Columbine he mercilessly taunts Charlton Heston, but it isn’t very satisfying. It isn’t hard to be disgusted by Heston’s insensitive actions, showing up at gun rallies in Littleton and Flint while both communities were grieving over pointless gun violence, but he is so easy to make fun of, why bother? If Heston weren’t such an old-style gentleman, Moore would never have gotten an interview with him. There are people who aren’t suffering from pre-Alzheimers symptoms and haven’t admitted needing recent treatment for alcoholism that Moore could go after, and I wish he would have found some more substantial targets for his energies.

Bowling for Columbine is an extremely provocative film. If it doesn’t provide any easy answers or ask the tough questions to those who could make a difference, it is still a film that should be seen. Whether you agree or disagree with his arguments, it is undeniable that as a society we have a problem with violence and guns. Moore has taken a difficult subject and made it perversely watchable. It is an extremely valuable document of how we live now.

To share your views on this subject, join us this Sunday at Cinema Center, following the 4 p.m. screening of Bowling for Columbine. The Center for Nonviolence will present a panel discussion of the issues raised in the film.