Root, root, root for the bad guys?: The upside-down world of The Big Short

They used to say economics was the dreary science, but no longer, as there have been a # of movies about the high jinx of Wall Street, hedge funds, and esp the collapse of the economic system in 2008. The Big Short is the latest and certainly ups the ante and the frenzy. As the director Adam McKay notes, it's "based on truth," in fact on a Michael Lewis book about three sets of hedge-fund investors who went "short" in 2008: each in his own way saw that the housing market was a bubble that would burst and bet against the housing market - leading to incredible stress and distress, to eventual huge profits, but not to much satisfaction or salvation. McKay does a good job establishing the personalities in each of the 3 groups - and he's helped in that each is distinct and colorful. He also does a fantastic job keep the movie going at a fast pace - with lots of quick edits at times, with some amusing scenes in which B-list celebs address the camera and explain some of the arcana of credit default swaps at al., and with some shrewd asides from the lead characters, assuring us at various times (e.g., when one of the traders confronts Alan Greenspan) that "this really happened," and one, amusingly, admitting that a scene (specifically, two of the hedge guys learning about the potential collapse from a brochure left in a bank lobby) actually never happened in reality. The film faces a really tough challenge and manages to make it work: we kind of root for these guys, underdogs in the trading world, even though, a., several of the players are pretty nasty, self-centered, and sexist, and, even more odd, to "root" for the is to root for the collapse of the whole financial system, a travesty and a disgrace. There's no real positive message here - in fact, the film makes us look over our shoulders and wonder if it could happen again, when it will happen next in fact. That's probably the goal. It makes a good companion piece with another recent film that shows the crisis from the POV of a homeowner under the water: 99 Homes.