Michael Moore waves as he holds the Palme d’Or. (Reuters)

Los Angeles, May 24 (Reuters): The White House calls the film “outrageously false,” but Hollywood is hot for Fahrenheit 9/11, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s caustic broadside at President George W. Bush.

A day after the film won the top Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in France, industry observers predicted the controversial movie would be a box office hit, even if some early reviews have hardly been favourable.

“I think it will be hugely successful,” said D.A. Pennebaker, veteran documentary director whose films include the Oscar-nominated 1992 election campaign saga The War Room. “It’s going to get a lot of publicity.”

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore takes aim at Bush’s handling of Iraq and the war on terror and traces links between the Bush family and prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden. It was greeted with a rapturous standing ovation at its Cannes world premiere, but not everyone was impressed.

Dan Barlett, the White House communications director, was quoted by the New York Times last week as saying of the film “it is so outrageously false, it’s not even worth comment”.

Also critical was the review in the entertainment industry journal Daily Variety which called the film a “blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet” and said it “fails to provide any hard facts or make any incriminating connections that a reasonably informed person doesn’t already know about”.

That may not matter to the fans of the man behind Roger & Me, and the anti-gun documentary Bowling for Columbine. Moore, in fact, laid the groundwork for Fahrenheit 9/11 a year ago when he accepted the Oscar for Columbine, and launched into a tirade against Bush on worldwide television.

A few weeks ago he was back in the news again, complaining that Walt Disney Co. had prevented its Miramax Films unit from releasing Fahrenheit 9/11. Disney said it did not want to be associated with a political hot potato in an election year, and noted that Moore had known this for a year.

Miramax co-chairmen Harvey and Bob Weinstein are in the process of buying the movie with their own money and lining up a distributor, which is not expected to be a big problem.

Thanks to Moore’s knack for self-promotion, “everybody in America is going to know about this movie, if they don’t know about it already”, said Michael Silberman, president of distribution at IDP Distribution.