Is there a single movie that deserves a Rewatchables episode more than The Big Short?

I think The Big Short may be the most rewatchable movie of all time, and the fact that it doesn’t have an episode yet is absolutely criminal. My case is as follows:

An absurdly star-studded cast that all deliver world-class performances. Bale, Carrell and Gosling are all at the peak of their powers in this movie. Gosling in particular absolutely nails a role that feels tailor-made for him - the scene where he pitches to Carrell’s firm might be my favourite scene of his career (“my quantitative!”). Also, the film has some massive names among the minor characters (Margot Robbie and Mila Kunis have time on screen! Jeremy Strong crushes it! They got Brad Pitt to play maybe the 10th most important character!).

The multiple (interlinked) storylines make this an incredibly easy and enjoyable movie to tune in to at any moment. There are so many scenes that can stand on their own as terrific viewing outside the context of the film. I mentioned the Gosling pitch already, but to note a few more: Bale doing the tour de banks to enter into the swaps contracts; the trip to Miami where the mortgage brokers take Carrell and co to the strip club; Carrell interrupting the Q&A while Bear’s stock price is crashing. There are very few if any wasted minutes throughout this movie - to use Bill’s ‘if I’m flicking through the cable channels and I see this on’ assessment, I’d say that it stacks up as well as any movie as one you can join in at any point and still be about as compelled as if you’d watched it from the start.

The comedy writing is elite and exceptionally well-delivered, but without detracting from the drama of the storyline. There are a number of genuine laugh-out-loud moments throughout the film that continue to hold up on a rewatch. The personality clash between the Gosling and Carrell characters make virtually all their interactions hilarious, and the dynamic among Carrell’s firm as a whole is also consistently very funny (“I spoke with Mark Baum. He says to fuck off”). We’ve seen McKay in his bag in this respect with Succession in the years since this movie released, and I think it can comfortably hang with the best Succession episodes when it comes to the whole deadpan-comedic-delivery-amidst-dramatic high-stakes-circumstances thing.

The story of the GFC itself is delivered in a super digestible way. It might be necessary to give some credit to Michael Lewis here as I have also read the book and the movie is quite true to it - but I think replicating that written story on screen is something that most screenwriters/directors would have a really hard time with, and I think it’s done almost flawlessly here. The context of the economic unravelling is necessary to understand the swaps contracts and shorts, and McKay presents it in a super entertaining way. The trip to Miami, the incredibly stupid mortgage brokers (“they’re not confessing, they’re bragging”) and the house being owned in the name of the landlord’s dog are really effective in making apparent the scope of the housing bubble without being too forceful or belabouring the point. Importantly, too, the movie doesn’t lose sight of the human effects of the crash - the Miami family moving out their home, the Pitt “don’t fucking dance” speech, the guy in the pub (“if you’re a banker you can fuck off”) all serve to make sure the viewer doesn’t drift into the misconception that this was all just bankers taking money from other bankers. It makes for a really compelling juxtaposition with the Gosling types, or the guy who Carrell has dinner with in Vegas who tells him about synthetic CDOs.

In short: elite cast, you can tune in at any point, very funny, and informative in an entertaining way. Well overdue for an episode.