A surprisingly engaging new film aims to educate Americans about their economy in the same way that An Inconvenient Truth educated them about climate change.
is "about as scary a movie as you're ever likely to see", says the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. But this is no blood-spattered horror film. Directed by Patrick Creadon, who delved into the peculiar world of crossword obsessives in the 2006 hit Wordplay, I.O.U.S.A. is a documentary focusing on "the US government's fiscally irresponsible habits" and "the not-so-small matter of how we ended up at the edge of a precipice", says the Toronto Star.
The film follows former comptroller (the chief federal accountant) David M. Walker on his 2007 Financial Wake-Up Tour', a cross-country mission to inform Americans that their country is broke and that people are facing the very real prospect of wretched poverty if the problem is not addressed soon. President Barack Obama will inherit US national debt already in excess of $10trn, almost double the figure George Bush inherited from Bill Clinton in 2000. This deficit leaves America reliant on foreign funding, particularly from China, and threatens future health and social security spending at a time when credit-bingeing consumers have no savings left.
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The film isn't perfect, says The Washington Post. The filmic devices used, including "man on the street' interviews that reveal how desperately stupid most Americans are about important policy matters" are in danger of becoming "played out" by overuse in similar "Wake Up, America!" films, such as An Inconvenient Truth. That said, Creadon makes his case using "interviews with impressive authorities", including former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan and Warren Buffet, says Time Out London.
A lesson on the US national debt "can never be as entertaining as animated penguins in Madagascar or chest-bursting space aliens", says Richard Nilsen in the Arizona Republic. But it's "surprisingly engaging for a documentary on economics and numbers", says the Florida Times-Union. "And it's scary. Really scary."
goes on limited release in Britain from 14 November.
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