Maxed Out is a documentary much in the same way Michael Moore’s movies are documentaries.
It’s the story of a few people who have their lives ruined by credit and credit card companies. They take the same schtick Michael Moore uses (which is an effective one, at that) to portray the evils of the credit card industry.
That’s genuinely the only problem I have with Maxed Out. You don’t hear from the card companies, but you do hear from the collectors they sell their debt off to, and you hear from the people who made uninformed, bad decisions (or whose children made questionable decisions) and you see the difficult path it has set them on. Moreover, the film shows credit card companies in league with the government, buying off Congress and the President to weaken bankruptcy laws to make it harder for consumers to get out of credit card debt.
It’s a powerful film, but powerful in the way Michael Moore’s are. I liked it and I even genuinely agree with the message – the credit card industry is far out of hand, taking advantage of so many — but it smacks too hard of propaganda. It would have been nice to see a few of the “evildoers” interviewed; even Roger & Me gave us that (or an explanation as to why the chief evildoer refused to be interviewed.)
