Freakonomics (2010) review

Cursory glance at some of the major points in economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner's pop-academic book on oddities in economics, for example: does allowing women the right to 'choose' lower the crime rate, and does 'bribing' high school dopes with cash and limos encourage them to get better grades (hardy har har)? As many have said, this is essentially a 'teaser' for the book itself, with head director Gordon assigning several 'radical' (cough, cough) documentarians to film individual pieces from the book - the segments range from tolerable (the Gibney) to the mediocre (the Spurlock), with Levitt's radical research (incentives!) holding the poorly-animated, stylistically-clashing components together. Might have benefited from a bit more visual consistency and continuity, but to its credit it served its function of making me locate a copy of the best-seller. As an aside: I've encountered as many weird first names in my years of teaching than most, and let me tell you, "Uniquee" is relatively 'normal' compared to some of the names I've encountered. And I can say with pride I've had the dubious honor of teaching someone named "Achilles"....