Lee Grant directs and narrates this dismaying look at the results of Reaganomics upon America's working class. She looks at the plight of the farmers who face foreclosure on their lands, people living in a 1980s' version of a "Hooverville" and are being forced to move, and at a family who has been burned out of their home and has nowhere to turn except for an overcrowded welfare house. The stories are moving and prove that bad things can happen to good people, but the film grows a bit tiresome by its conclusion. Grant does an obviously careful job of choosing well-spoken subjects in order to help strengthen her slant on the issues at hand. The result is the feeling of being a bit manipulated by the filmmaker, but of course, almost every documentary filmmaker is going to have a passion for his or her subject matter and have his or her opinions on it, otherwise the filmmaker would not bother to make the film in the first place. "Down and Out In America" is an interesting film in terms of its subject matter, but it offers nothing ground-breaking in regards to its contribution to the genre of the documentary.
Review of Down and Out in America
