The Big Short Review

Adam McKay solved the problem of explaining subprime mortgages by stopping the film and letting Margot Robbie do it from a bubble bath, and the gimmick works because the movie assumes its audience is uninformed rather than stupid. Bale's Michael Burry is the best performance in it, barefoot in a fluorescent office, drumming along to metal at full volume, unable to read a room and therefore able to read a spreadsheet.

Steve Carell plays anger as grief and finds the only character who is morally awake. Barry Ackroyd shoots handheld with restless snap zooms and Hank Corwin cuts on impulse, which keeps the pace fast enough to smuggle an enormous amount of exposition past you. The weakness is flattery. The film invites you to feel clever for following a fraud and then superior to everyone who missed it, with Ryan Gosling's narration nudging that along, until a late turn toward moral seriousness sits awkwardly on what has been a comedy. The Florida subdivision scene with the tenant who answers the door holding his small child, paying his rent on time while his landlord has quietly stopped paying the mortgage, is the sharpest thing here, and the film sets him aside until one last glimpse of the family living in a car.