Based on the book by author/director James D. Scurlock, Magnolia Pictures documentary Maxed Out aims to open a few eyes on the enormous amount of personal debt in America as well as the overwhelming total of national debt.
The topic is one that touches everyone from college students that have just signed up for their first credit card to long-time homeowners that are trying to avoid foreclosure. In a nation whose citizens owe an average of more than $9,000 in credit card debt, it isn’t hard to find lives that have been ruined due to predatory lending practices or personal mistakes. Scurlock most succeeds in bringing those stories to the big screen, interviewing relatives of debt-riddled suicide victims, consumer advocates, and sympathetic pawnshop owners.
Maxed Out also provides a fairly significant glimpse into the credit machine. The feature delves into the practice of targeting bankrupt citizens and those with a “taste for credit,” touches on the bill co-written by MBNA, one of the top campaign contributors to George W. Bush in 2000, that made it more difficult to file bankruptcy, and compares current practices to those of sharecropping.
But despite the incorporation of lesser-known, pertinent pieces of information such as Suze Orman having a deal with FICO’s parent company or Bush appointing Larry D. Thompson, who served on the board of directors for credit card company Providian (which was cited for fraud and insider trading), to head the Corporate Fraud Task Force, the film fails to focus enough on documenting the shady practices of creditors. Though the stories of those afflicted are touching, Maxed Out would benefit from a little more muckraking.
– Scott Morrow
Maxed Out
Director: James D. Scurlock
90 minutes, Magnolia Pictures
www.maxedoutmovie.com
Opened 3/9/07 in select cities