I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There's a lot that can be taken away from this documentary, and I believe that this is a documentary in the truest sense of the word. Cautionary tale is, however, not something I would take away.More often than not I believe that people become extremely wealthy by having some level of good sense. For those who fit that description I don't begrudge them whatsoever. I really don't have much to say against anyone who earns their fortune, be it large or small.Yet David Siegel is someone who built his empire getting people to buy into his properties with money down that the vast majority of them didn't have. Toward the end of the documentary David has the audacity to say they can't be living beyond their means. Yet he got his wealth by getting people to vacation beyond their means. I find no sympathy for him whatsoever.Meanwhile there is Jackie Siegel, the silicone built trophy wife who in one sense talks about the hard work she put into obtaining a computer engineering degree and working for her hometown company of IBM, and you almost want to feel something for her. But then you see her indulging in expensive beauty treatments, having animals she is incapable of taking care of, and seemingly clueless that when you rent a car you don't get a valet with it.All of this is played against the backdrop of two properties: the largest single family detached home based on the layout of the Palace of Versailles (90,000+ square feet), and the Planet Hollywood Westgate Tower in Las Vegas, the crown jewel of David Siegel's professional properties. The house was built on land the Siegel's owned and would have been built without financing, except he took a mortgage out on the house to reinvest back into the company. And they began building the house only to have a place to store all the stuff Jackie was buying up compulsively.Meanwhile the PH Westgate has opened and things are looking good until the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008 hit, and the construction company for the tower hasn't been paid in full. Most of the documentary is taken up by David's desperation to find revenue while having to lay of 7000 employees (which he feels bad about in passing comments) so that he can keep both his grotesquely huge house and his brand new tower.Some interesting underlying stories develop however when one of the few house staff who isn't laid off talks about her upbringing in the Philippines. Her father simply wanted to own a concrete house. What money she makes she sends a portion back to help family and friends. She's content to live in a playhouse for David and Jackie's children.The other stories surround the children themselves. David's oldest son is the VP of the company, and says he and his father have only a professional, business relationship, nothing close to resembling a father/son relationship. And while he acknowledges that the best advice is to let go of the Vegas tower and nearly all the money issues would be solved, he encourages his dad to hold onto it.The other children are much younger, and it's clear that they don't seem to be as interested in the money as their parents seem to be. They wonder why their father doesn't join them for dinner. One of David's daughters is rightly upset that her efforts to help the family out by learning to cook is going both unnoticed and unappreciated by her father. Their mother is buying so many animals that the kids don't even know what all their pets are. And it's clear that David and Jackie just don't work as a couple when they live out their version of financial hardship as none of the children in the home seems to really matter to either of the parents. David goes so far as to say his greatest accomplishment in life was building his business, and then gives passing mention to his children.I'd want to say this is a cautionary tale, but in all honesty I don't believe it is. It is more about how people are sold on an idea to spend more vacation time together by buying something they can't really afford with money they don't have (and may have to dip into their savings to get) by a man who has seemingly has all the money in the world but has little to no time for his own family, has no savings, buys property only to mortgage it in order to gain "cheap money" to be reinvested, gets mad at the banks for allowing him to do that and then wanting their money back, all to keep two properties that he doesn't really need. And the filmmaker just showed it all unfold.

Where to start...watching the rampant consumerism and lack of care given to all the junk they acquire made me sad. The part of the movie that bothered me the most was a small scene where Jacquie finds her daughter's pet Iguana dead of starvation. After the maids are fired, the kids no longer bother to care for their pets. It's brushed off as if it's nothing.Jacquie (Wife #3) is a shopaholic with ridiculously oversized fake breasts who seems a bit ditzy. She has a engineering degree but seems to have given up her smart, determined self from years past to be arm candy to a man 30 years her senior (David) who has a affinity for beauty pageant winners. Once the economy starts to affect their lifestyle and they are on the verge of bankruptcy things get ugly - you can see the resentment he has towards his wife. The stress of imminent financial ruin should make him appreciate his family more, but instead it causes him to retreat and ignore his family. At one point David refers to Jacquie as an old hag (mean!) The slam doesn't even register with her - she is kind of living in her own little fantasy world and she rationalizes he is bad behavior saying he is just stressed. She spends gobs of money on clothing ( designed to showcase her comically large breast implants), shoes, and handbags and plastic surgery to keep herself "hot" for her geriatric not so good -looking ( but rich!) husband. While she seems generally clueless about things you sense she is probably a person who is good on the inside, but lacks discipline and self-awareness and gets validation based on how she looks. David on the other hand becomes mean and spiteful towards his family. The true character of a person comes out when they are stressed and David shows an ugly side.I think the film gave a fairly honest portrayal of the family and the Seigals relationship whether they wanted it to or not. There may of been a few disingenuous scenes (e.g. Where Jacquie pretends to think a chauffeur comes with the car they are renting from Hertz,) but overall the film is well done and compelling viewing. My fantasy ending is for Jacquie to dump her loser husband, get a real career with her engineering degree and start to parent her kids in a responsible way. Ain't gonna happen, because I hear she is signing up to do a reality show. Please, no mas!

After reading the top 2 IMDb reviews for this documentary using words like "appalling", "revolting", "tasteless", "classless" and everything short of "Nazi" to describe the subjects, I figured this would be a fun way to forget my own financial inadequacies by relishing in the multi-million dollar tragedy of a bunch of monsters who deserve to suck slime. So with that in mind I poured myself a cup of fresh blood and got my vampire on.Immediately I was "disappointed" because, aside from having a pair of ivory tusks displayed in their living room, these people didn't display anything worthy of being flogged publicly as I was led to believe. Sure, their lifestyle was extravagant to a fault. But, ask any third-world kid who can't afford a pair of shoes, and you'll learn that extravagance is relative. No matter, thought I, wiping some drool off my non-designer jeans, this show is just getting started; I'm sure they'll spit on a few beggars in good time!Actually quite the opposite. As the family begins to realize it's financial decay, instead of telling the laid-off employees to eat cake, Jackie actually started donating goods and volunteering at a local charity for their benefit. Aw man, way to kill a good feeding frenzy, thought I. Well, at least I can still hate her for all the excessive cosmetic treatments she keeps getting for her own vanity. Oops, wrong again. Those of us paying attention soon realize that she's not doing it for sheer vanity's sake but to try to please her husband as psychologically she seems insecure in that department. And as we learn more about the titular Queen of Versailles, we see many parallels between her and the other unfortunate queen, Marie Antoinette in her paper mâché marriage to Louis XVI. Yes, the interpersonal drama runs thick, between all family members in different ways. And just as the French eventually realized that they maybe went a little too far with that whole guillotine thing, you see that the Siegels, while guilty of clueless indulgence yes, don't nevessarily deserve to get their financial heads lopped off. These people are not aberrations of humankind as you'd been led to believe by some reviews, but instead, this is the story of a normal American family that has been subjected to abnormal extremes.True, the husband (a man of 1 emotion: stoic), did at one point talk about how he personally got Bush re-elected by means that "may not have been legal", but he immediately counters it with "but then we got involved in this Iraqi War, so maybe I didn't do that much good after all." That statement is the key to understanding this powerful documentary. It is NOT a spectacle of seeing Emperors thrown to the lions. Rather, it is a very Faustian tale of pride and arrogance that gets the best of humans, and humans eventually accepting or at least admitting to the possibility that they were wrong. I'm talking about all humans, not just these people.I have to hand it to the tragic family for bearing their downfall much more nobly than their rise. In the end (especially after watching the deleted scenes showing more of their human side), I felt good--not because I had just witnessed a gruesome car crash like other viewers, but because these people (except maybe 1 individual? I won't spoil) had all evolved into something better.In that respect, this is a very complex story which requires your full attention. It's not like a sporting event that has 1 good guy, 1 bad guy and 1 outcome. It's really one of the best illustrations of pride under pressure. And although my greatest financial hurdle consists of how to pay my $75 parking ticket, I can somehow associate with these ex-billionaires on how money, and lack thereof, changes us all.

You have to laff when the "Queen"--often seemingly desperate to kiss her AH husband into some sort of affectionate submission (she always fails to receive anything other than an aggressively polite peck, which seems more like a 'kiss-off')-- the "Queen" plays the victim card, due to the financial upheaval in 2008. She's truly sickening, despite her "humble" roots. Were these pigs ever in real jeopardy? Well, their "conspicuous consumption, had to be "downsized" from poisonous excess to sheer madness, and meanwhile, the wonderful housekeeper has suffered and struggled to meet her own dreams--and you get the feeling she's cast her lot in with the wrong people. Fascinating and disgusting, see it.