Should have been made as a mockumentary

Rating: 5/10 (23 March 2016)

The Big Short is based on a true story of how investors predicted the financial crisis of 2007, and earned money on betting that it would actually happen. The film is based on a fact book with the same name. The film includes big names such as Brad Pitt, Steve Carrell, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling. It was nominated for several Oscars including best picture, and it did win for best adapted screenplay. Director Adam McKay has prior to The Big Short, mostly done comedies with Will Ferrell so the step in this direction and the Oscar nominations was definitely unexpected.
To be perfectly honest, I didn't care that much for the film. The financial crisis is fascinating and I understood that the film was to be about advanced house mortgages. Also, to make it easier for us the audience, they made Ryan Gosling into some sort of narrator who from time to time face the camera and explains to us what different things means. The biggest problem I had with The Big Short is that after you understood what it's all about, the financial crisis and how they made money on it, there's nothing left to rely on. The characters and their personal development is minimal, except for a couple of clichés by Carrell and Pitt, where they begin to moralize so that we the audience don't feel like everyone in the film is a greedy moron who makes money on other people's suffering. A boring mistake. Look at one of the most famous characters of all time, Michael Douglas' investor in the film Wall Street. He is a greedy moron but he is also a great character.
I personally would rather have seen this film as a sort of mockumentary, a documentary with a touch of parody. The Big Short wants to be comical but at the same time to be taken seriously and I don't think this really works. A shorter documentary about the crisis with a comical approach would have been more interesting. We would have gotten rid of all the over the top moral cliché scenes. Strange is also that at some point in the film the characters travel to a private owned house and question the tenants about their house mortgage, and later come to the conclusion that they should bet against the entire USA economy. The scene only exist to make the situation more understandable to us but at the same time it just makes the characters look dumb and not believable investors. The Big Short was a good idea and it was interesting until I understood what it was all about. After that it just became predictable and boring. Practically no new information is revealed after about half of the film, and the entire film is over two hours. I grade it a 5.
David - Filmografen