I.O.U.S.A.: Critic Reviews

A sharp, absorbing portrait of our national debt crisis.

Yet another documentary that everyone should see but most will not.

This movie is a scary, exhilarating blast of atheist common sense.

Both a handy election primer and a bowel-rattling cry of fiscal doom.

Here's the bottom line, kids. The United States is probably going to go broke during your lifetimes.

Forceful and lucid.

There's no quick fix for a culture 'addicted to debt,' as one wag puts it in the film. But watching I.O.U.S.A. is a good place to start.

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.

An alternately amusing and alarming primer on America's off-the-charts fiscal irresponsibility.

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?

The buck stops here in this sobering but disarmingly irreverent look at the national debt.

Packed with facts, figures and the testimony of policy experts, the film is no wallow in wonkiness, but a surprisingly sprightly tough-love lesson in fiscal responsibility.

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.

[A] timely documentary...There is a sense of urgency that propels Creadon's cautionary narrative as an alarming wake-up call to financial discipline.

Its aim is to raise awareness of an impending financial disaster if America continues acting fiscally and morally irresponsible.

Creadon avoids turning his film into a partisan slugfest, instead opting to focus on how our country as a whole must come together.