Seven years out from the financial crisis of 2008, critics agree that Adam McKay‘s “The Big Short” is a great way to learn how it all went down.
With an 86 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is being hailed as a “smart” and “terrifically enjoyable” look at the men who predicted the meltdown and made millions betting against it.
“The film (wisely) never overestimates viewers’ attention spans,” Inkoo Kang wrote in her review for TheWrap, “embracing instead a kitchen-sink approach to any technique that might work: Ryan Gosling talking to the camera, Margot Robbie defining financial terms while taking a bubble bath, tumbling Jenga blocks, the most obvious visual metaphors to be conceived.”
But it’s not just McKay’s direction. Critics also praised the performances by the central cast of Gosling, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Steve Carell. Cameo appearances by Robbie and Selena Gomez were also mentioned as some of the film’s highlights.
See what reviewers like best about “The Big Short” below:
“Sure, a number of features and documentaries have been made about [the 2008 financial crisis]. But they did not have a guest appearance from Margot Robbie, Leo DiCaprio’s trophy wife from “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013), explaining how mortgage bonds work while lolling in a bubble bath.”
“The words fountain from the mouths of Type A guys in suits in offices, and somehow all that talk — and ‘The Big Short’ is virtually all talk — very quickly becomes weirdly fascinating. It’s made so by the caliber of the actors talking that talk — most notably Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt — and the supercharged intensity they bring to the delivery of the verbiage.”
“One of the most appealing things about this very appealing movie — a stylistic Chex Mix of storytelling, satire, advocacy, and clip art — is its high regard for the intellect of the viewer, who is at times addressed directly by the film’s characters or by celebrities playing themselves in pop-up cameos. ‘The Big Short’ … proceeds on the assumption that not only are Americans capable of understanding exactly what happened to our money in the wake of the events of 2008, but we deserve to understand it — indeed, that it’s our moral duty to do so.”
“Adam McKay is angry, and righteously so. The director of ‘The Big Short,’ a rollicking adaptation of Michael Lewis‘ non-fiction examination of the financial crisis, has taken that book’s disparate threads and thrown them together onscreen, and the messiness feels almost justified … McKay seeks to find order, but at the same time, he’s taking cynical delight in the chaos. He’s created a film that is fun to watch, but based on themes that are terrifying to consider.”
“To this film’s credit, even though it places audiences on the side of its protagonists, it doesn’t let us forget that there were consequences to what Wall Street did, that millions of Americans suffered because of the actions of a few.”
“It’s a trip. At the end, your brain hurts and you feel sick to your stomach, as can happen when too much adrenaline has been surging through your system. But that queasy, empty feeling is the point: This is a terrifically enjoyable movie that leaves you in a state of rage, nausea and despair.”
“Directing with feverish ingenuity, as if he’d been told this is the last movie he’ll ever make, McKay pulls out all the tricks, from dizzying hand-held camera moves to having characters occasionally break the fourth wall to staging hilarious cameos in which celebrities playing themselves break down some of the most complicated ‘inside baseball’ talk about the subprime mortgage crisis and collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed securities.
“And it’s mostly a comedy. A devastatingly funny comedy.”
“I’d call it a Restoration comedy for right the fuck now, a farce fueled by rage against the machine that relentlessly kills ethics, and a hell of a hilarious time at the movies if you’re up for laughs that stick in your throat.”
“If ‘The Big Short’ didn’t have these layers of absurdist splash and sizzle, and didn’t have four of the biggest male stars of our era playing deliberately outrageous outsiders and renegades, would you be even remotely interested in watching it? With its cartoonish pace, larger-than-life characters and detours into farce and agitprop, this movie captures the accelerated pace of life in the financial markets and the vast scale of their mendacity far more vividly than a naturalistic drama could.”
AFI FEST Party Pictures: Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Shine in Hollywood (Updating Photos)
AFI Fest presented by Audi brings "The 33," "Concussion," "The Big Short," and "Where to Invade Next." Angelina Jolie unveiled "By the Sea" on Nov. 5, opening night.
To end eight nights of AFI Fest presented by Audi's premieres that heavily featured individual stars, the ensemble cast of Adam McKay and Paramount's 2008 mortgage meltdown drama/comedy "The Big Short" took over the TCL Chinese on Thursday night: Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, and Steve Carell.
Getty Images
Bale and Carell have no scenes together, so this could have been the first time they met. It was not to be a Brad Pitt bookend on the Hanukkah of Hollywood festivals (8 nights), as although Pitt and Angie opened the fest with "By the Sea", he was not available to come for his starring turn in the closing night film.
Getty Images
Sarah Roberts with husband Finn Wittrock, whose character is pejoratively termed by a Wall Street Journal reporter character to have a "garage band hedge fund" ($30 million) while sniffing out the impending home mortgage meltdown. (P.S. He's great in the film.)
Getty Images
Writer-director Adam McKay mashed up Tarantino, Sorkin, and Bale's own Patrick Bateman in a slick, adrenalized screenplay that's candy-coated medicine. Most at the after party said some variation of "I feel smarter, but I'm not entirely 100% sure I understand what happened."
Getty Images
Maybe they should ask co-screenwriter Michael Lewis (right), who also wrote the underlying book. Jeremy Kleiner joined Lewis at the Roosevelt after party.
Getty Images
Byron Mann goes toe-to-toe with Steve Carell in a crucial scene set at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, where he is introduced as a "gold plated a--hole." He delivers in this fulcrum point in the plot, and on Thursday, festival host Audi delivered him, along with all the stars, to the premiere. After the screening, I spotted Mann in the Audi Sky Lounge at the Roosevelt, where invitees ate Wall St. cocktail party food, like oysters, crab claws, and poke tuna sliders.
Getty Images
Brad Grey and Paramount are planning a Manhattan premiere before the movie opens on December 11.
Getty Images
AFI Fest director Jacqueline Lyanga with Gosling on Thursday night.
Getty Images
Earlier in the week, in addition to moderating panels with Will Smith, and introducing nearly all the films she selected, Lyanga hung backstage with Johnny Depp and "Black Mass" director Scott Cooper. Lyanga deserves, and is going, on an international vacation shortly.
Getty Images
Will Smith watched five autopsies with Dr. Bennet Omalu, the man at the center of Sony's "Concussion" drama, but admitted at the world premiere that the one personality quirk he could not adopt from the animated researcher and C.T.E. pioneer was his laugh.
Courtesy of AFI
Bob Costas, who delivers essays on NFL crises as part of his role on the ratings champion "Sunday Night Football," met "Concussion" writer/director Peter Landesman at the Chinese Theatre premiere on Tuesday night, November 10.
Courtesy of AFI
During the cheers and laughs for "Concussion", Ewan McGregor was upstairs at the smaller TCL Chinese 6 talking up Broad Green's faith film "Last Days in the Desert."
Courtesy of AFI
A peek inside the Roosevelt after parties, where Sony had their own private "Concussion" bash poolside. Three NFL widows (including Junior Seau's wife and daughter) attended Tuesday's event.
Courtesy of AFI
Four of the rescued Chilean miners joined the celebration for "The 33" at AFI Fest on Monday night. At the Roosevelt after party, miners Luis Urzua (the last man to come up) and Mario Gomez huddled up with lead Antonio Banderas, who plays Mario Sepulveda.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
A replica of the Fenix capsule that brought the 33 miners to the surface five years ago planted on the terrace in front of the Chinese theater.
Lou Diamond Phillips and producer Mike Medavoy. Warner Bros. releases "The 33" this Friday.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Saoirse Ronan ("Brooklyn"), Sarah Silverman ("I Smile Back"), and Olivia Wilde ("Meadowlands") spent their Sunday afternoon at the "Indie Contenders Roundtable," one of several AFI awards season crossovers.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Blythe Danner and TV Academy Governor Lily Tomlin visit the Roosevelt for the Indie Contenders event.
Michael Moore's "Where to Invade Next" played well at the Egyptian on Saturday night, Nov. 7. Producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal joined the documentarian on stage.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Angelina Jolie Pitt with NBCUniversal Vice Chair Ron Meyer on opening night. Universal's limited release begins on Nov. 13.
Getty Images
"Sicario" star Benicio Del Toro held "a conversation" at the Egyptian Theatre on Saturday. The AFI previously recognized Del Toro's "The Usual Suspects" with a spot on their list of "Top 100 Heroes and Villains" of the past 100 years.
Getty Images
Del Toro with AFI FEST festival director Jacqueline Lyanga.
Getty Images
Pitt worked the Hollywood Boulevard autograph crowd.
Michael Kovac/Getty Images
Universal chairwoman Donna Langley with the Pitts at the Audi hosted festival, where Fiji water is a new partner this year.
Getty Images
The Dolby Theatre is home to both AFI FEST and the Oscars. AFI President Bob Gazzale on the big stage on opening night.
Getty Images
Gena Rowlands checks in to see "By the Sea."
Getty Images
A few blocks east down Hollywood Boulevard, the Egyptian is also hosting AFI screenings.
The hotest real estate at the Roosevelt after parties is the Audi Skylounge.
Getty Images
1 of 33
TheWrap’s Party Report takes you inside the festival’s biggest events at Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre, the Roosevelt Hotel, and the Egyptian
AFI Fest presented by Audi brings "The 33," "Concussion," "The Big Short," and "Where to Invade Next." Angelina Jolie unveiled "By the Sea" on Nov. 5, opening night.