Let's be realistic.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The Big Short is just a very good movie. All of the performances are very good, and of course the cast is phenomenal. I always love a well-done true story movie, and this is a fascinating story that accurately captures the unfortunate realities of finances. Direction is extremely impressive, and the weaving of characters and stories was very well handled. Would've liked to see even more from the other sides of the story, as it was primarily focused on those who bet on the short, but it's a reasonable choice to make. Very satisfying and well done, and very real.

Even though it's overused, I loved the self-conscious style of the story. Financial terms that are difficult to understand for the laymen are explained by people that have nothing to do with finance. This isn't cute or funny the way it sounds, it's satirical and sad because of how absurd the whole thing was. Combined with wonderful performances, by Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, the story becomes enjoyable and not as boring as the film admits the story to be in the beginning. On the other hand, I couldn't help but feel that the film was emotionally inconsistent. I am not suggesting that films of this nature should be balanced. Sure, there's always drama in satire but the dramatic scenes of the film were not enough to warrant themselves in respect with the whole. There should have been better management of these scenes so that either they are balanced, or they are so imbalanced that they become more than they seem. I haven't read the book, but the film is well-made and worth a watch.

If this book's charge was difficult (translate the entire financial crisis through a few compelling characters), the film's charge may have been tougher (translate the entire financial crisis into 2 hours of pop entertainment). I give the movie bonus points for innovation and acting. The complete tear down of the 4th wall was bold, and the performances by Bale and Carrell were fantastic. BUT there are downsides to the approach. In this case, Every wink wink nudge nudge moment kept me a little more distant. And the moral arc suffered as a result. It was a pop film with a conscience, but - if you want a financial crisis movie - go see Margin Call.

Search for recent films with Selena Gomez and one finds such as this. She is only in them for a minute, a disappointingly short time, but in this the appearance is okay. She plays herself trying to explain one of the mechanisms behind the 2008 USA and worldwide financial disaster, and the setting for that example is the betting games at Las Vegas.While that financial crash was happening I was too tied up by the UK Blair Witch period to be able to access news, so I only knew about the crash by prices starting to rise and supermarkets starting to move stuff around a lot, which as a way to put off supermarket customers seems effective, just I assume that it is done to advertise their stock range and to try to get more income? When UK Tory politicians blamed the crash on the previous Labour government I had no basis, other than suspicion, for questioning that.The Big Short tells me things about the recent world and communicates better than a serious technical work would have done. I needed this.'Citizenfour' (2014), does does the same about a period when I was starting to be able to access the news. It adds more detail about how the modern world works.Look to the 2017 UK world, Brexit, these both help me to understand and appreciate that, though it would need additional features to give an explanation of how the left and right have gotten tied up by their equivalents of Blair Witch.News in September 2015 of unusually high UK levels of unsecured debt due to poverty and Brexit suggesting that a financial crash might be imminent in the UK, it is The Big Short that supplies the alarm bells for that.