Entertaining, but tells only part of the truth

Rating: 5/10 (10 July 2016)

The Big Short is a very entertaining and enjoyable film to watch. The acting is top notch, it's got some great humor, it's fair share of dramatic sequences, and the characters describing complex financial instruments was both funny and a very creative way to get the point across. For sheer entertainment value I would give it a 9.
However, I'm afraid this film is blatantly guilty of the crime of omission. The obvious tone that was set throughout the picture was that the only reason for the financial meltdown of 2007 was due solely to greed, corporate malfeasance, and outright corruption when it came to the housing market. No doubt all those were indeed factors in the financial crisis, but there were a whole host of other contributors that the film conveniently leaves out.
One of the first things I noticed that was left out of this film was the fact that the US government played a very large role in the 2007 financial meltdown - this was never mentioned anywhere in the movie. There were a few mild references to the SEC (our supposed government financial watchdog) in the film, but you really had to be paying attention to catch it and they were very insignificant. If you didn't know any better, if you'd never done any objective reading on the 2007 financial crisis, and you took this movie purely at face value, you would've thought the huge 2007 mess was all caused by greedy right- wing corporations out to make a buck any way they could. This angle is only partially true.
There were some bad actors in the corporate and financial arena when it came to the housing market, yes, but The Big Short makes it seem like every financial corporation and financial corporate employee was out to screw your average American who just wanted to own a home - it's just simply not true!
Not to give a massive financial history lesson here, but the government contributed in the following ways to the 2007 crash: 1) cheap money, 2) very low interest rates for too long, 3) the Community Reinvestment Act (forced banks to lower their lending standards, especially to minorities and poor Americans), 4) promoting quasi-government agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (they loaded up on sub-prime mortgages), 5) very bad fiscal policy, and 6) loosening of the lending standards for mortgages. Each one of these aforementioned factors is complicated and not easy to explain, yet The Big Short never mentions ANY of these ANYWHERE in the film.
Another thing that was bothersome is that this film attempts to portray the borrowers of these sub-prime loans as just poor suckers who got taken advantage of at the hands of everyone from the banks all the way down to the greedy real estate agents. There is one scene where an exotic dancer admits she owns five houses and a condo all financed with sub-prime mortgages. I'm sorry, but to make it look like these people had guns held to their heads to take out these loans and that they weren't taking advantage of the real estate boom themselves is disingenuous at best.
If you want to watch a good movie for two hours of entertainment, then I think you will enjoy The Big Short. But if you're looking for a docu-drama style film that explores all angles of what happened back in 2007, then this movie falls miserably short.