Maxed Out

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Absorbing, scary documentary.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Scurlock does well to counter the more dire aspects of the film with a razor-sharp sense of humor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Village Voice Nathan Lee

A slapdash piece of work totally indebted to second-hand rhetorical strategies.

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.