I.O.U.S.A. (2008)
Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 65
Fresh: 56 | Rotten: 9
A potent and lithely constructed documentary about America's financial crisis, I.O.U.S.A grabs you with figures but holds you with irreverent wit.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 21
Fresh: 18 | Rotten: 3
A potent and lithely constructed documentary about America's financial crisis, I.O.U.S.A grabs you with figures but holds you with irreverent wit.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 1,764
Movie Info
As the United States faces unprecedented financial crises, filmmaker Patrick Creadon explores just how America got to be in the economic mess that it finds itself in, eventually detailing just what the nation would have to do in order to prevent a bad situation from turning into an all-out financial disaster from which no citizen could escape. ~ Cammila Collar, Rovi
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All Critics (65) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (56) | Rotten (9) | DVD (1)
This solid doc reminds us how unsustainable the current American economy is.
A movie that should be seen by everyone.
You will not likely forget the Jeremiad it presents about how the United States has been living on borrowed money -- and borrowed time -- for decades and now is presenting the bill for our extravagance to our grandchildren.
I.O.U.S.A. is a clear, cogent and compelling primer on contemporary American economics and the not-so-small matter of how we ended up at the edge of a precipice.
A documentary about the U.S. addiction to debt, I.O.U.S.A. could have easily taken the title of another movie released this week, What Just Happened?
If this week's headlines have failed to convince you that the United States is on the verge of an economic meltdown, Patrick Creadon's scary new documentary, I.O.U.S.A., will demolish any lingering doubts.
Bottom line: The party's over. There's no such thing as a free lunch. America itself may be a bubble.
If more people had watched this film, they might still have their houses.
Well made, informative and genuinely terrifying documentary, in which the use of humour can't quite diminish the spectre of doom and gloom.
Think of this important documentary as Economics 101, a primer on how America and Americans spend, and what hardships the future holds for us unless we change the pattern and our habits quickly.
For a film starring the national debt, this is a good one. The expected tedious numerical research is accompanied by excellent graphics and archival footage that bring it alive. Is anyone listening?
Practically begs audiences to declaim it essential viewing, rather than quietly convincing us
Fending off the global repo man
I.O.U.S.A manages to keep this dense, dry information dynamic enough to be interesting and terrifying enough to be important.
If you believe the terrifying documentary I.O.U.S.A., America is headed for a financial crisis of monumental proportions - and apparently, we are probably too late to keep it from happening.
Its aim is to raise awareness of an impending financial disaster if America continues acting fiscally and morally irresponsible.
[A] timely documentary...There is a sense of urgency that propels Creadon's cautionary narrative as an alarming wake-up call to financial discipline.
Creadon avoids turning his film into a partisan slugfest, instead opting to focus on how our country as a whole must come together.
A film with an urgent message that uses the medium to its advantage.
Unexpectedly entertaining, given that it's about dodgy accounting on an epic scale, the film predicts an economic cold shower that is about to douse America's prospects, thanks to its ever-expanding national debt.
This movie is a scary, exhilarating blast of atheist common sense.
Patrick Creadon's film is a lucid history lesson in the failures of successive Republican presidents to put a stopper in the country's leaking fiscal hole.
Chastening, compelling.
It makes a very good effort at trying to cover this enormous, important, complex issue of the national debt in less than an hour and a half.
Although the movie is unabashedly alarming, it's also intelligent fun.
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- I.O.U.S.A (UK)







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