Freakonomics documentary review

Indiewire has a review of the Freakonomics documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival the other day.

Taking his central cue from Levitt’s conviction that “incentives matter,” executive producer Seth Gordon (“The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters”) directs several introductory segments featuring Levitt (the economist) and Dubner (the journalist) breaking down the book’s main assertions, aided by playful 2-D animation. The first of these sequences borrows from an early chapter in the source material, taking on self-interested real estate agents to explain the authors’ intention of parsing the motives behind many phenomena often taken for granted. While Gordon’s fluffy treatment of his chatty subjects suggests the potential for a “This American Life”-type television series, the individual short films embody their claims with a variety of methods.

Magnolia Pictures acquired the North American rights to the film so we should be seeing it in theaters later in the year.

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• Freakonomics
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