Critic Reviews

That a documentary about economics could be so personally emotional and affecting is remarkable. And to learn from Reich in this film, as his students at Berkeley do, is a treat and a privilege.

Reich is a more lively speaker than Al Gore, however, frequently working jokes about his sub-five-foot height (his growth having been disrupted by a genetic disorder) into his presentation, and many of the film’s statistical interludes have been entertainingly animated as insurance against eyeball-glazing.

Wisely, Kornbluth strives to put a human face on the situation, focusing on several families who represent hard-working citizens who are barely making ends meet with their shrinking paychecks—let alone building up any savings.

It’s unseemly, I know, to praise a movie like this for the stand-up-comic affability of its host. But Reich’s engagingness also gives credence to the seriousness of his message. He’s all about fairness, and, in his demeanor, as well as in his presentation, he embodies that ideal.

The wonkiness is at a minimum and Reich delivers it with tales from his own life, since he’s the son of a dress store owner and a mom who helped in the shop. Essential viewing, no matter how you cut it.

An engaging film that’s head and shoulders above the average talking-head parade.

Reich and documentary director Jacob Kornbluth turn out to be the ideal collaborators to tell the story of what that gap is, why it happened and why it's important, all in a totally engaging way.

The fortunate thing about for Inequality for All is that, for all its good information and useful insight, it also has an appealing person at its center: Robert Reich, the economics expert and Berkeley professor who was also the labor secretary under Bill Clinton.

The job is not to convince us of something many Americans don’t want to believe, but to address something we all know is happening and nail down just how bad it really is. Judging from the pit left in a viewer’s stomach, it does the job pretty well.

While not as revelatory as Al Gore's 2006 Oscar-winning documentary, Inequality makes a resounding case that the middle class is facing its own planetary crisis: becoming an endangered species.