Review: Freakonomics

Water is wet, breathing is good, and people will make decisions that benefit their situation – so say Freakonomics.

Like the 2005 best-selling book of the same name, this film partners economist Steven Levitt with New York journalist Stephen J Dubner to introduce their ‘freaky’ study of incentives. We’re told about the rotten state of sumo wrestling and the long-term social benefits of giving women the choice of abortion along the way.

Broken up into four short films, each directed by a different filmmaker, we’re told that if you know how to look at the data correctly, you can see that people follow incentives no matter what the situation, and that those incentive-based actions can have interesting consequences.

If that sounds like the most obvious thing you’ve ever heard, you’re right, and the two ‘freaky’ men behind all this admit as much. It’s the colourful, irreverent examples used to depict these patterns that provide the real interest. Unfortunately this is also the main weakness of the film.

It starts with a repetitive, unenlightening segment on the socio-cultural consequences of naming children. The question, “do names have a direct correlation to social status and success?” is asked, refuted by one professor, asserted by another, then the debate crumbles into a, “as long as you love your kids everything’s going to be alright” conclusion.

Raising the bar considerably, the next segment takes a close look at the social structure and inherent corruption of the sumo wrestling world, and Japan’s complicity. Again, the magical numbers are vaguely referred to with nifty animation providing misdirection. This is either because the theory is so brain-meltingly complex that the average viewer wouldn’t get it, or because there’s only so many ways to say ‘people’s decisions are based on incentive’.

There’s an interesting segment on how the US’s decision to legalise abortion in the1970s eventually reduced crime in the 1990s, but with more thinly spread ‘thought pieces’ hogging the limelight, it’s a lone voice of interest in a crowded room of experts delivering lectures on how best to suck eggs.

Freakonomics is out on DVD 3 January 2011.