Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

The Big Short

Who the fuck does Adam McKay think he is?  After partnering with Will "Potato Head" Ferrell on Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, The Other Guys, Anchorman 2, and Get Hard, people walk into an Adam McKay movie expecting a short bus IQ, drooling goofball comedy.  So imagine my surprise when halfway through The Big Short, I realized that I'd been hoodwinked and bamboozled into watching a fiery diatribe against the hoodwinkery and bamboozlement that led to the economic clusterfuck of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed.

Most people watch movies for one of three simple-as-a-kiddie-crossword reasons.  Usually, folks just want to turn off their brains and escape their miserable lives for an hour-and-a-half or so.  Sometimes they pick a flick because they're trying to get laid - this is the only reason romantic comedies continue to exist.  Or, they need to straight up get off - thanks PornHub!

They sure as cum in a condom don't flock to the movie theater to be reminded about how fuckawful everything is even if the message is delivered via razor sharp performances from the likes of Ryan "Little Goose" Gosling, Christian "Hay" Bale and Steve Carell "Of The Bells" with the finer points illustrated by Margot "Margoing Margone" Robbie in a bubble bath and Selena "Morticia Loves" Gomez at a blackjack table.

But that's exactly The Big Short's game.  It shows how Michael Burry and a handful of other stock traders figured out that a combination of stupidity, fraud and greed in the banking industry would lead to the 2008 crash.  Because they figured it out in 2006, they . . . and EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ONE of the big banks . . . were able to bet against the mortgage market and make billions of dollars while the majority of Americans lost huge portions of their savings and/or their homes and/or their lives.

"You see," The Big Short explains, "Big Business and Big Government have been shoving their big dicks up America's ass for so long that no one even notices anymore that they're getting fucked without so much as a reach around."

Ok, so sure, Wall Street and D.C. only ever stop sucking face long enough to hate fuck anyone making less than $250K a year back into submission, but you don't suffer the worst economic disaster since the fucking Depression without the help of millions of shortsighted, moronic, overreaching assholes buying houses they can't afford with loans they can't ever hope to pay back.

There's more than enough blame to go around, and The Big Short knows it.

This stupid country.

January 24, 2016