Advanced Search Beta »
Basic Search Fields
Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
Metascore
65 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 20 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 20
  3. Negative: 2 out of 20
view
per page
  1. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    100
    Absorbing, scary documentary.
  2. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    88
    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.
  3. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    80
    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.
  4. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    80
    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.
  5. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Crust
    80
    Scurlock does well to counter the more dire aspects of the film with a razor-sharp sense of humor.
  6. Variety
    Reviewed by: Joe Leydon
    80
    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.
  7. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    80
    A riveting, amusing, enlightening and emotionally affecting movie by a guy you've never heard of, about -- wait for it -- the consumer debt crisis.
  8. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    75
    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.
  9. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    75
    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.
  10. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    75
    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.
  11. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Sally Foster
    70
    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.
  12. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    70
    Tends to let his consumers off the hook--you'd hardly guess that any of these people are responsible for their own financial woes.
  13. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Josh Rosenblatt
    67
    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.
  14. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    63
    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.
  15. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    63
    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.
  16. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
    50
    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.
  17. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    50
    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.
  18. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    50
    Scurlock's documentary serves up cautionary tales of epic abuse, though the overall tone is faux cheerful and sometimes genuinely entertaining.
    All this critic's reviews
  19. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Nathan Lee
    30
    A slapdash piece of work totally indebted to second-hand rhetorical strategies.
  20. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    25
    All the film provides is this bulletin: Lefties are angry about the things Lefties are angry about, chiefly corporate profits.
prev next
Page:
  • 1

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
5.2 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 6 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 1 out of 3
  1. SteveS.
    8
    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!"… Full Review »
  2. BrettS
    2
    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.… Full Review »
  3. JackD.
    10
    Very, very insightful, revealing documentary about the credit industry in the US. A must see for anyone.
See all user reviews »