The biographical comedy drama follows Michael Burry discovery on the Wall Street exposing that a number of subprime home loans are in danger of defaulting.
While The Big Short is hardly uplifting, it still manages to tell a rambunctiously funny tale that's as informative as it is entertaining, humor walking hand-in-hand with tragedy to ultimately craft a comedy that's impossible to dismiss.
It's an expertly calibrated entertainment, giving the actors room to play and reframing industry jargon as simple, elegant metaphors... And McKay orchestrates it all so deftly that you might not even notice how angry he is - or at least not right away.
Pajiba
September 21, 2016
It's to McKay's credit that he makes The Big Short so fun; there are a lot of talented comedic actors here, the banter is strong, and there are pop culture montages strewn throughout, meant to mark the passage of time, that help maintain visual interest.
Thanks to Anchorman (2004) auteur Adam McKay's caustic comedy The Big Short, the events of the great economic meltdown of 2008 are beginning to make sense.
McKay cowrote The Big Short's screenplay with Charles Randolph, and they know how to keep an audience engaged, broadcasting this knowledge often, as both parody and indictment.
