The Bubble

The Big Short

A few years ago the world experienced one of the most devastating and hard times within the economy. Of course we all know that Hollywood would come along and try to shed light the best way they know how. Though I asked myself, “How in the world is Hollywood going to take one of the most serious events in human history and make it funny?”. Well, enter Paramount Pictures latest The Big Short.

The easiest way to explain what The Big Short is about is the housing market crash in the early months of 2007. The sad thing about this is that the film beings 2 years prior to this when hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale The Dark Knight) predicts the collapse and begins to bet large sums of money against (at the time) one of the most stable markets on Wall St. Stumbling upon what Burry was doing was Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling The Nice Guys), an investor that starts quietly sharing this idea with traders on Wall Street and accidentally comes across one such trader by the name of Mark Baum (Steve Carell Foxcatcher). Baum starts to investigate Vennett and Burry’s claims and decides to also put money on a market crash. What happens just two short years later is history.

This is the second best way to fully understand what happened to our economy and housing market a few years ago. The first is obviously the book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine , written by Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game). The filmmakers do an incredible job of simplifying the jargon and confusion of what happened. Somehow they also make the film such a pleasure to watch and laugh at.

The cast is amazing, starting with Bale. Christian Bale transforms himself into this eccentric, borderline sociopath that goes against all odds to prove that he is right. Along with Bale, Carell is another member of this cast that just seems to shine. Carell plays Baum as hot head with anger issues that seems to come across as a jerk than anything else, yet he is likeable. Gosling provides this same talent within this film as well. Vennett is obviously in this scheme for himself, but it is his softer moments in this film that are wonderful for Gosling.

Now to the man that had the impossible task of making this devastating situation into a semi comedic movie. Writer/director Adam McKay (Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues) masterfully takes this confusing subject and creates a movie that is so easy to understand. McKay also somehow gets the audience to find parts of this funny. However, please note that this is not Anchorman funny, but the ironic/sarcastic funny that doesn’t overshadow the seriousness of this crisis. McKay deserves every award he is nominated for.

One film that I never expected to be as good as it is, landed itself on my top 10 list of the year. Adam McKay is a genius with this film as far as I am concerned and if any of you would like to understand this subject a little better, than please see this movie.

The Verdict: See In Theatres