Friday, June 22, 2007

Maxed Out: My Review

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, because much better pf-bloggers than I have already taken James Scurlock's documentary film Maxed Out out back and smacked it around. I watched the DVD last night, and here's what I took from it:


  1. When you watch a 1.5+ hour documentary focusing on the U.S. credit industry and the TREMENDOUS DESPAIR IT HAS SO SAVAGELY WROUGHT UPON US ALL [/sarcasm], and the only time anyone contemporary in the film mentions "personal responsibility" to ANY appreciable degree is in the "Special Features" tacked on at the end, then you know the "Wahhhhh Factor" is totally in play. And it was.

  2. If you're on the wrong side of consumer debt right now, you'd better do whatever it takes to get the hell out. Do it yesterday. Because when it comes to "getting the hell out," the deck is 150% stacked against you. And it will only get worse.



And was it just me, or did anyone else walk away wondering about the (for me) significant amounts of context that didn't make it onscreen? Slices of Senate hearings and dollops of Greenspan-speak don't mean squat to me when I don't have their full context. And juxtaposing this stuff with the tearful faces of debtors and debtors' families just exaggerated my unease. I had this feeling over and over again in the film ("Okay ... but what was the background to that?"). It was gosh-darned unnerving, I tell you.

Netflix can have this one back tomorrow ... without so much as a second viewing on my part.

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— Posted by Michael @ 10:06 AM








2 Comments:
 

Thanks for the warning. I was thinking of renting this, but now won't waste my time as it will just raise my blood pressure.

I honestly do think that college kids can get credit cards too easily. I know I did, and I had no idea what I was getting into and had no money to pay them. It was my fault for signing on the dotted line, but I think they really do prey on them.

However, for the most part I don't like hearing people blame the evil credit card companies when they sign up for every credit card offer that comes their way. And I'm guilty of filling out those forms and living way beyond my means. I'm just glad I finally woke up.

Blogger Mindy
, at 9:58 PM, June 28, 2007  
 

Yes thanks for your useful comments
on not worrying about the Dvd i suggest if you can read explore the Book,its much more detailed and dont think its just the individual thats paying the price of Credit card Debt, its the american Health and welfare system that is paying for the War in iraq,and soldiers are having to use Credit Cards to pay for Medical expenses. America is beyond a trillion in debt the whole budget is run on borrrowing and more spending without any Savings [even india has more money in the Bank] if this is not a wake up call for the rest of the World to start putting sanctions on America Fighting a War in iraq that Billions of Dollars in debt and Growing, then we might as well go back to the Cold War at least the Americans were more scared of the Russians back then and stayed the hell out of trouble spots like afganistan where the Russians Lost a whole Army over a Ten Year Period you think Iraq's going to be over any quicker.

Anonymous Anonymous
, at 7:48 AM, July 03, 2007  
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