Critic Reviews

Huang will never forgive Smith for killing the golden goose, and Smith will probably never take responsibility for it (to judge by the Instagram message with him that Huang shares in the film), but that’s not really what this raw and well-relished documentary is all about.

Vice is Broke isn’t the ‘hit piece’ of its maker assets. It’s a valentine to the youth and the exuberance with which movements, literary or otherwise, ascend, make their mark, and then are heard from nevermore.

Huang has made an eye-opening capsule history that will resonate most keenly with Vice fans. But there’s something more widely instructive, too, in his portrait of a culture clash that turned into an unlikely courtship: ragtag punks and the investment bankers eager to hit the “millennial sweet spot.”

This isn’t meant unkindly, but Vice Is Broke will be essential viewing for anybody who ever worked there, with its details about who had what job title and when.

For as much as Huang tries to go for a more freewheeling approach, treating his interviews like off-the-cuff conversations taking place in bars and restaurants, Vice Is Broke isn’t that intimate or revealing.

For every interview there is with a journalist offering more of this, there is one that just meanders with a notorious influencer that should have probably been cut.

The problem with “Vice is Broke” is it never quite gets around to answering what went wrong with Vice, content to mimic its “quirky” form of filmmaking as interview subjects recall the toxic workplace atmosphere that undeniably produced some formative journalism.