Freakonomics: Critic Reviews

As a movie, Freakonomics is like Jujubes for the brain -- it starts to get cloying halfway through the box.

Amiably passes the time.

Merely proves that a batch of bite-sized featurettes does not automatically add up to a satisfying meal.

[It] isn't freaky enough.

An attempt to turn the 2005 nonfiction bestseller into a high-energy docu-romp, "Freakonomics'' is a misconceived botch.

The 20-minute shorts range in style from traditional fly-on-the-wall narrative to a kind of hyperactive PowerPoint presentation.

Freakonomics examines social, cultural, and financial issues with an eye to getting people to think differently.

dds up to a revelatory trip into complex, innovative ideas and altered perspectives on how people think.

Equal parts journalistic expose and targeted anthropological dissection, the slick anthology production Freakonomics makes heavy ideas go down easy.

Some parts of the movie are more satisfying and intriguing than others, but there are enough surprising and non-intuitive revelations that even the most jaded viewer will likely learn a thing or two.

Like the source material, it's ultimately less than the sum of its parts -- an assemblage of moderately interesting human interest stories that don't carry much weight on the big screen.

When this freakumentary hooks up with Urail King, it gets an A.

The limited time given to each of the short films means that there is little opportunity to get really down and dirty with the number-crunching, so that for every aspect that is fascinating there is an attendant frustration.

A lighthearted plea to the audience to try to think outside the box when it comes to matters of causality.

A real hodgepodge of ideas and themes, directed by six different directors, it lacks cohesion. It does, however, have some interesting segments.

Moderately interesting documentary.

Freasonable.

Levitt and Dubner often talk about the importance of giving incentives to customers. It's not clear if this film gives quite enough of them to those people who've already bought the book.

...an enjoyable, lightweight affair that plays like the pilot for a premium cable series - something like a less raucous version of the Penn & Teller's Showtime series

... somewhere between ... an illustrated, freshman-level lecture by a superstar professor and ... a brainy but popular television anthology show.

Freakonomics is, much like the book that spawned it, a breezy entertainment that leaves you with a lot to think about.

If you didn't read the book, you can get a less-satisfying version of it here, but you'd be better off hitting the book. And if you did read the book, the movie is superfluous.

On this take from a statistician whose days are, um, numbered: the docu-omnibus engages, as we wonder what the next filmmaker might do. Proving Levitt's theory that incentives do indeed matter.

The film makes some potentially dull material come to life, but it's a tad pleased with itself for delivering that small gift.