More Like a Hollywood Lecture on How Bad Wall Street is than it is a Movie

Rating: 3/10 (17 January 2016)

This movie had the feel of an old ABC After School Special more than it felt like an entertaining movie (dating myself). It felt like a Hollywood lecture and when the screenwriters felt incapable of writing a scene to convey a point, they just had the actors speak directly to the audience to explain a concept and describe how evil it was. It had a very didactic, instructional tone to it. Though much more stylized and sophisticated than they likely receive in North Korea.
Yes, Wall Street banks made hay with mortgage backed securities, but a lot of people had blood on their hands including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, from pressure from government officials that felt everyone deserved to own a home whether they were financially qualified or not.
This movie portrayed all the people shorting the market and reaping huge profits as reluctant moralizing crusaders. The acting was mostly melodramatic and Steve Carell was terrible and miscast as a brilliant investor. Nothing about him screams brilliant. Annoying, yes; brilliant, no.
The saddest part about the movie is that most viewers will see it as a tell all on the financial crisis because they'd rather get their news from Hollywood than from the research. And, in the end, that's what Hollywood wants; to advance it's point of view and, ahem, make gobs of money along the way.