Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
Red Envelope Entertainment | Release Date: March 9, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
3
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Absorbing, scary documentary. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineKen 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. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew 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. Read full review
80
VarietyJoe 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. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)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. Read full review
80
Washington PostAnn 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. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKevin Crust
Scurlock does well to counter the more dire aspects of the film with a razor-sharp sense of humor. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter 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. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNathan 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. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen 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. Read full review
70
Film ThreatSally 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. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.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. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleJosh 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. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsElizabeth 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. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy 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. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Scurlock's documentary serves up cautionary tales of epic abuse, though the overall tone is faux cheerful and sometimes genuinely entertaining.
50
The New York TimesStephen 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. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe 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. Read full review
30
Village VoiceNathan Lee
A slapdash piece of work totally indebted to second-hand rhetorical strategies. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle Smith
All the film provides is this bulletin: Lefties are angry about the things Lefties are angry about, chiefly corporate profits. Read full review
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