Movie Review: Maxed Out

James Scurlock's Maxed Out, now available on DVD, isn't necessarily eye-opening, but it is horrifying. I say it isn't eye-opening because how could any American watching it not nod and say "Yes, I knew this. On some level, I knew this." That Americans are more and more in debt. That the federal government, from the chief executive on down, has been lax in policing credit card companies and other lenders--lax, in fact, in defending tax payers generally, and siding with corporations.What director James Scurlock does is triangulate his approach--by showing not just the effects of easy credit but the insidious ways in which other kinds of loans tie in to this, and just how octopus-like the corporations have become in their machinations to prey off of average Americans. By then also showing government failures--or, rather, willful failures--and focusing on the real-life stories of some of those unfortunate enough (or, granted, stupid enough) to be caught up in all of this; by also showing the effect on a more global level, including America's own foreign policy decisions and federal government debt, Scurlock provides a personal and wider-context view of the whole sordid system.Not always stated directly but implied is the way in which our society has become consumerism gone wild. This is something that struck home for me when I slashed my monthly budget to become a freelancer. I was amazed at the wastefulness that I had allowed to accumulate over two decades of being a supposed "adult". It was sickening, and yet it was spend-thrift and responsible in comparison to much of what we consider normal.The truth is that today we're willing to poison ourselves for cheap products, we're even willing to drug ourselves with them in a sense, because the more we buy the more we're able to distract ourselves from any number of personal and global issues that we would otherwise have to deal with. It might just be the after effect if seeing this movie, but I feel as if we're all traveling in a huge dump truck full of things, headed for a cliff that we can see--that we know we're going to drive right over and out into thin air--and yet we're in the back of that truck partying like we haven't a care in the world. Surrounded by garbage we don't recognize as garbage.Part horror movie, part sobering clear-eyed account, Maxed Out has no discernible buckwheat--referring to our rating system based on Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead, in which one con says to another that the most painful way to die is to be buckwheated (literally shot up the ass).