review for Down and Out in America on AllMovie

The fact that Lee Grant's film won the Oscar for 1986 is a better indication of the slim pickings than of the film's superior quality. It's not that Grant doesn't identify important sociopolitical issues and capture wrenching testimony from those affected, but rather that she applies too little thought toward how the issues are connected, or whether they should be. Isolated portraits of low-income misery in the United States do not provide the solid thematic spine traditionally expected of a documentary. As Grant moves from bankrupt farmers contemplating suicide to welfare moms unable to provide birthday presents for their children, it's not the emotion that's missing, but the directive. Grant seems to have chosen socioeconomic maladies from a hat, focusing on some more than others depending on the subjects' willingness to supply sad details that fit into her loose framework. This is especially clear as she lingers on the closing interview with two destitute parents who were burned out of their home. They warrant longer treatment than the most fascinating segment, which focuses on the bulldozing of a sophisticated homeless village, seemingly because they speak in an unending string of miserable sound bites, nakedly offering up their suffering with no regard for self-editing. Down and Out in America ends up as a succession of affecting sequences that have no holistic unity, and too few shocking revelations to qualify as newsworthy.