Takes a confusing situation and makes it more so

Rating: 3/10 (11 January 2016)

I feel this film fails on a number of levels: 1) It centers on a bunch of characters that I couldn't care about. It wasn't so much about what caused the mortgage crisis but about people who took advantage of the crisis to make money for themselves. I didn't understand what they were doing to accomplish this. They were doing "something" that would make them a lot of money if mortgages failed but I never really understood what that was.
2) The frenetic style of the film was disorienting and distracting.
3) The asides with famous people explaining things was irritating. And the famous people weren't A-list celebrities, it was like these were the best ones that they could get.
4) After being spoon-fed information, I still feel like I didn't understand what they were talking about. (Perhaps I just didn't care.)
5) Perhaps if they included how the mortgage crisis affected real people, that might have helped (they showed ONE family leaving in their car but these folks were renters and could move elsewhere). They didn't ACTUALLY lose their own house.
6) There's a line from an episode of "Frasier" where Roz says, "Throw in a couple of strippers and that still sounds dull". There were a couple of strippers in this movie for NO good reason and it was still dull.
Overall, I found the movie self-indulgent on the director's part ("Hey look ma, I'm a director!") and on the part of the characters. I don't feel I learned anything. And apparently no one involved in the financial world did either.