I was hoping to use this in my high school economics class. While the content is there, is has some questionable analogies and some scenes that I just can't show in a high school setting.

At the very end of this documentary, the essence of what they were saying (imo), is to keep your mind open, to many possibilities. Excellent advice.

I'd read the book a few years back, and found it interesting and thought provoking. Like many others, there are some realities in our society which are pointed out in Freakonomics, that aren't too comfy for me to accept - nonetheless, there's abundant research backing their findings, which compels me to think more deeply. (And that's a good thing). I don't believe everything I read, either - discernment in all things, is what I think we should all practice.

Although I'd read the book, I liked the film, also - in some ways, it added more dimension to what I'd read before. I must have glossed over the severity of corruption in sumo wrestling, back when I read the book. Watching that part of it in the film, had much more of an impact on me. All in all, I'd recommend this film.

Some simple answers explain how things work. And how things perpetuate themselves even when they should not. It also shows the faults of people that are supposed to be in the know and how their thinking can be skewed.
One example, the reduction in crime that they said did not happen because of stricter gun control. How did they miss the fact that it was, More Guns, that lowered crime rates.

It promotes out of the box thinking about cause and effect then validating interpretations of the results by analyzing the data. Wish more people would look at things this way -- such as the government -- rather than just guess and then throw money at things saying they're doing something. The enlightenment from the last section is that even with financial incentives, some students still were not interested in working at all towards better grades. We still haven't figured that out. But 35-70 students were motivated and helped to do better! Wish this was a regular series that continued to look at other issues. Nice approach! I learned some things.

From the very beginning, These cool guys couldn't get the story straight, "So I'm selling a house, Oh no wait, yeah you be the real estate guy, Ok, so let's start over..." That's not verbatim, but if you watch the time, he did say "Let's start over" in the first 60 seconds of the film... (00:00:55 to be exact.)

Isn't the opening lines of a movie, even a documentary, supposed to be compelling? Eye-catching? Nope... Let's start this one over folks... Someone packed their bowl a little too full.

That being said, I lasted for about 30 more minutes before I was so lost on what point they were trying to make about If you are black don't name your kids this, but don't not name them that... How about this... Everyone lives their own life, The End.

So an enlightening piece on some aspects but so concerned to make a point that it fails to notice and explore what's happing right in front of the camera as they film. It took a failing high school student to summarize the blatantly obvious fact that incentives without a vehicle is a waste of time. The kid said if the oven is broken you'll only get milk despite the fact that I promised you milk and cookies. The kids here began to ignore their education long before the university showed up with dough. There was nothing to build upon, so they quickly realized that they weren't being offered 50 bucks for a few hours of homework they were being offered 50 bucks to go back and learn 3 or 4 years of material on their own just so they could do the homework. These kids weren't to dumb to realize this, they are just too dumb to realize what it means for their future. And, the university? Well, they were too dumb to realize they were conducting a study based on the only thing they knew: college bound kids such as themselves. They never understood the environment, motivations, or thought process of blue collar bound kids. That is the same reason that most teachers give off a superiority complex around blue collar parents despite never having left school to get a real job themselves. Education is important but no one, not Ivy leaguers nor master mechanics should determine which is more valuable. It's great that you can make 150K basically arguing for a living but shouldn't you be able to change the tire of you own car too?

Repeats the tired argument that the elimination of unwanted children among certain ethnicities and social classes resulted in a decrease in crime.

The movie description sounded like it could be interesting, but it ended up being a major let-down. The presenters are unable to explain things in a clear way. There's lots of meandering and random topic changes and useless information and deviations. Not worth your time to watch. You can literally get better information from a 30-second TikTok.