Director Adam McKay has a filmography that includes Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Stepbrothers, The Other Guys and Anchorman 2. So, when choosing a director to adapt a dramatic, fact-based story of a few investment bankers that discovered the housing crash that messed up the US economy in 2007-08, he wouldn't be high on any lists. He's a very funny and capable director, but not one that I could see bringing life into this story with any sort of finesse. However, I'm happy to say that I have been proven wrong. McKay not only breathes life into what should be a very dull and un-filmable story, but he delivers one of the strongest directorial jobs of the year.
The Big Short is a very complicated movie if you're not wise to a number of wall-street, real estate, banker terms (of which I can admit that I am not... I was a writing major... and I suck at math) then a lot of the movie may go over your head, it did mine. However, McKay and writing partner Charles Randolph take such complicated terminology and make so that the common person (like me) can mostly follow along with what is going on. What's cool about what they've done is they haven't dumbed down any of the discourse, they've just written it in a way that these guys are talking to each other the way they normally would, but the events surrounding them give us indication of the seriousness of each situation. It's very entertaining. It's somewhere in the same vain as what I would guess Moneyball would be to someone who has never watched a game of baseball in their life. Though they're not familiar with the terms, they're still able to follow along with a great film and understand as much as possible without spoon feeding them Sabermetrics For Dummies.
What McKay has also done is made a very funny movie as well. The people involved in unconvering the impending economic crash are almost as greedy as the big banks so there isn't much of a protagonist per se because everyone is trying to exploit everyone, but some motivations are slightly more noble than others. Like Robin Hood for assholes. But, these are characters we kind of want to see shove it to the big banks even though we know they're kind of the same. McKay has taken these characters and made them real, but also made them very funny. They're not caricatures of the real people, these ARE real people. We're also given proper explanation of banking terms from celeb cameos popping up literally only to break the fourth wall and give us the important info we need to know but probably aren't already privy to. It's the type of quirk we're used to from McKay but matured from spoof to satire very cleanly. It's highly enjoyable.
And, of course, you can't have a cast with Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt without mentioning the stellar acting that goes along with wonderful storytelling. It's funny, the only real comedic actor of the bunch is Carell and he's probably the best one of the entire troupe. No one moonwalks through their scene, but Carell really shines as a banker in anger management who flies off the handle at anyone he meets and believes that everything in the entire world is corrupt. While McKay matures as a director, we're certainly watching the maturity of a great actor unfold over the years. After Little Miss Sunshine and especially Foxcatcher Carell isn't that far off from leading a drama that will be his acting masterpiece. The others are great as well and it's a strange thing too, that was a bit misleading in the trailer, but other than Gosling/Carell in a couple of scenes, none of the characters played by these huge stars ever meet. They all independently discover the phenomenon on their own and try to profit from it. The story isn't manipulated so that they all end up finding one another and plotting together. That's what's so perfect about the story... it's all true (and the one instance that something is manipulated, it's commented on directly towards the audience to let us know that it didn't go down exactly like that).
While The Big Short goes down into 2016 with important other true stories (like Spotlight and to some extent, Concussion) it shouldn't just be remembered as such. It's a movie that not only tells of a really fucked up time in our recent history, but it's a very smart comedy for adults who have brain cells they're prepared to use while watching a film. It's funny, it's smart, it's tragic, and it's something to be seen.
A-
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