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Maxed Out
EMAILPRINTRed Envelope Entertainment / Truly Indie
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 5 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Documentary
Written by: James D. Scurlock
Directed by: James D. Scurlock
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 9, 2007
DVD: June 5, 2007
Running Time: 90 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Chris Barrett, Robin Leach, Luke McCabe, Mark Mumma, and Liz Warren
Maxed Out takes viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. With coverage that spans from small American towns all the way to the White House, the film shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of "preferred customer" and tells us why the poor are getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer. Hilarious, shocking and incisive, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us. (Red Envelope Entertainment)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
TV Guide Ken Fox
At times funny, but mostly tragic, Scurlock's film is important viewing for any who owns a credit card without realizing that it's a wallet time bomb.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Another strong journalistic-style film, this one exposes how unbelievably rapacious the financial industries have become in extending credit to unlikely prospects -- among them college students, nursing-home residents, small children, dogs and dead people.
Read Full Review >Variety Joe Leydon
Intelligent, informative and unusually entertaining documentary errs only when it yanks too insistently on heartstrings while focusing on worst-case scenarios involving desperate debtors driven to suicide.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
James Scurlock's documentary Maxed Out, tells the bone-chilling, bloodcurdling, hair-raising story of a country (guess which one?) that's up to its eyeballs in credit-card debt.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
A riveting, amusing, enlightening and emotionally affecting movie by a guy you've never heard of, about -- wait for it -- the consumer debt crisis.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Scurlock does well to counter the more dire aspects of the film with a razor-sharp sense of humor.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Scurlock's filmmaking style leans more heavily on woebegone personal testimony than facts and figures, but politicians willing to go up against the credit industry's lobbyists would be well advised to take a look.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Maxed Out sacrifices depth for breadth and like a lot of low-budget documentaries, it's done no favors by its grimy, no-fi aesthetic. But the film's scattered ruminations on credit card mania add up to a powerful indictment of a culture of mindless consumption spinning out of control.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Maxed Out, while occasionally muddled in its financial details, presents a more-accurate-than-not vision of a nation that is starting to look like a candidate for rehab, on both an individual and a national level, for its addiction to debt.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Sally Foster
At a time when our debt as individuals and as a nation is at an all-time high, Maxed Out offers a much needed look at this escalating dilemma.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Tends to let his consumers off the hook--you'd hardly guess that any of these people are responsible for their own financial woes.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
Like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) before him, Scurlock sets his sights on vast money-motivated conspiracies and doesn't rest until he finds them.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Scurlock barely acknowledges the logical reality of any credit card transaction: If you choose to buy something, you will have to pay for it eventually.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
James Scurlock's documentary horror show has a critical message to impart -- your credit cards are out to kill you -- and a naive, ham - handed way of imparting it.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Although Maxed Out would like to be this year’s "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," it doesn’t measure up. "Enron" was a stronger film because its focus was specific, the personalities under its microscope were outsize, and its story had a beginning, middle and end. Maxed Out, which has no narrator, gathers facts, opinions and impressions and tosses them into a blender. And its story is still unfinished.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Scurlock's documentary serves up cautionary tales of epic abuse, though the overall tone is faux cheerful and sometimes genuinely entertaining.
San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
While the documentary does a credible job of pointing out the magnitude of the problem, it skirts the issue of what can be done about it and by whom.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Nathan Lee
A slapdash piece of work totally indebted to second-hand rhetorical strategies.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
All the film provides is this bulletin: Lefties are angry about the things Lefties are angry about, chiefly corporate profits.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 4.6 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Steve S. gave it an8:
Earth to the American public - if you keep on electing survival-of-the-fittest Republicans, don't be surprised when large swaths of your society turn Darwinian without prior notice. Yes, it would be really nice if everybody lived within their means; but as the movie makes clear, the credit card companies are now actively seducing the poorest credit risks, because their highest profits come from soaking marginal customers with late fees. Such dubious and predatory strategies have addicted our economy to the self-delusions of American consumers. If people did start being more responsible with their credit cards, it would be the end of our standard of living. Nor is the US government any more prepared to face reality than the American people are. It just has the power to raise the ceiling on its debt, a luxury private citizens lack. The movie is smart, ironic and funny. You come away from it with the strong intuition that the more credit card applications you get in the mail, the more insulted you should feel, because the modern lender strategy is to rope in as many losers as possible. It would also have been fitting to end it with the same portentious message Criswell intoned at the finale of Plan 9 From Outer Space - "God help us in the future!"
Brett S gave it a2:
Too biased of a documentary to deserve a good score. It only shows half of the problem, that lenders need to tighten lending standards. The problem that Americans want to buy whatever they want whenever they want, but when it comes time to pay what they owe they don't want to is only briefly skirted. NY Post reviewer says it best: The film takes care to hide almost everything its overspenders bought, but toward the end a weeping woman takes us through the sanctum where, until indebtedness suddenly struck, she once kept her 500 souvenir plates. Hiding half of the problem does not a good documentary make.
Jack D. gave it a10:
Very, very insightful, revealing documentary about the credit industry in the US. A must see for anyone.
