Hard to not notice the different directors and styles in the segments. Some are GREAT, but others, even with an interesting pitch, are not well done. I love Spurlocks segment on names best, but also adored the Sumo segment, purely because of visuals. All in all the subject and message suffers under the choice of having several directors going at it. To bad!

Read the book.

Started off well with an interesting segment but it ends being too heavy and disjointed.

Highly entertaining, though having little to do with actual economics as we've come to understand them. What hinders this film is the pseudo-collaborate effort of the segment directors, each of them skilled in their own right. The film fails to find a cohesive voice, because the segments all have their own, at times drastically different, visual and story-telling style. I found the first half of the film far more entertaining, and well-made, than the latter. The segments on baby-naming [by Morgan Spurlock] and corruption in sumo wrestling [by Alex Gibney] stood above the others, which comes as no surprise considering those two tend to be the more gifted documentarians of the group. Slight directorial miscues aside, there is fascinating subject matter throughout, and this doc is a prime example of the adage "there's something for everyone."

I love this sort of documentary, the kind that can both entertain and inform in equal measure. It's basically four mini documentaries in one all looking at different aspects of life, from Morgan Spurlock's section on how much someone's name affects their life chances (the first and best part of the doc) to Rachel Grady's part on the question of can you bribe kids to succeed in school? It's based on a surprise hit book which admittedly I haven't read but this was one seriously engaging documentary.

Analysing everything from the side of incentives, certainly lends itself for some interesting case studies. I feels a bit uneven since different directors take on the different case studies, so some are more entertaining than others, but overall it's certainly interesting and it's a subject I care for.

Just as good as the podcast so get on that. I didn't read the book, 'cause books are for nerds.

Read the book.

Interesting content - particularly abortion Vs crime rate. Very segregated film - all parts seemed too separate from one another (probably due to different directors used). Needed some constant, possibly one narrator.
Disappointing, but good.

Watchable solely for the Eugene Jarecki bit on crime rate.

Fascinating series of short documentaries following economists analysing data from various studies. Much more interesting than it sounds.

Human behavior is studied from an economics perspective. While interesting on paper, the material does not come across well on film.

What starts out as a promising documentary on statistics and causality finally reveals itself to be a series of short doc vignettes written and directed by others than the authors of the book the movie is supposedly based on. My problem isn't with the format of the movie, it's with the varied styles of the vignettes that don't have a connecting theme or mood. And with each one, the whole suffers that much more.

Morgan Spurlock is himself to a fault, Steven Levitt's terrible camera presence and lisp is distracting, the concerns and studies, while interesting, are better discussed in various documentaries easily found on Netflix and YouTube, and you learn all too quickly that there's no real point being made at any time. Just watch some TEDtalks online and save yourself some time.

Started off well with an interesting segment but it ends being too heavy and disjointed.