Charismatic economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich brings us a documentary lecture on income inequality in America and the need to fix a brutally unequal and unfair system.
The film really does feel like a lecture, a feeling only buttressed by the fact that it is inter-cut with lectures Reich gives to an undergraduate class at Berkeley. If you really don't know much about economic inequality and how it serves as a significant drag on our nation, then by all means you should check this movie out and watch it. I recommend it for that group. For those of us that have been following the story a little more closely, however, there’s not a whole lot here of interest. For you folks, perhaps check out the more satisfying, harder hitting Maxed Out or Inside Job
instead.The film waits too long to invest the film with human drama, even then giving emotional short shrift to the impact of inequality. We need more of the human impacts of inequality, but the film seems a little squeamish, preferring to stick with an upbeat approach and too quickly moving on whenever things get a little emotional. The film also never works well as a political polemic because Reich and the filmmakers seem to be way more invested in seeming nice than in helping us to understand why we should be angry. This is a policy lecture smoothly packaged for the Nightly News crowd, not for people looking for a call to action (which the film nonetheless makes at the end). I also have to jeer Reich and the film for trying to rehabilitate the odious Alan Simpson. That turd of a politician has long advocated (and continues to advocate) for policies that go directly against what Reich is purportedly preaching in this documentary. Reich never examines that, instead choosing to kiss Simpson's ass and treat him as some sort of model for what a politician should be. Not cool.
Screened on Blu-ray.
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