Hot Coffee (2011)

Purely Joyful Movie!

As Good As It Gets

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This is an interesting documentary, although it is misrepresentative in its description and summary. Its not simply about the infamous "hot coffee" lawsuit against Macdonald's.I thought it was a movie which revealed how foolish and greedy people are in their civil lawsuits. I thought the movie would reveal the woman to be a conniver. In fact, this movie is a slap at conservative political ploys to reduce lawsuit damages, and manipulate the justice system.The movie strikes at Karl Rove Inc, and the US Chamber of Commerce. While this is a valid complaint, there is a lot of greed in the personal injury realm, but that is not really addressed. Pretty sly indeed. While I feel the Macdonald's lawsuit was righteous after seeing the evidence, I don't feel like tort reform is a bad thing.Why? Completely unrestrained punitive awards do affect business. But, the movie doesn't offer any ideas for what dollar amounts would be reasonable for the cases of injuries it presents. The woman in the Macdonald's case settled after her 4 million dollar award was reduced to 450,000 dollars. Yes, she suffered and is entitled to punitive damages. But how much? There has to be some balance to these awards, and that is why corporate interests insist on award caps. How about some compromise in setting some type of limits? There has to be a compromise between the poor brain-damaged kid receiving several hundred thousand then going on Medicaid, and a ridiculously high jury award based on emotion. One thing is certain to me. Insurance companies are dishonest at their core.The movie demonstrates that they do not pass on the savings to consumers, ever. This is a good documentary. Just make sure you employ critical thinking while viewing. Documentaries have become so sneaky and political its scary.

The topic was very engaging. Very eye opening to see how the big companies can control things on a national and local level, but the overall quality of the movie was extremely lacking. I tried to not be that harsh in understanding this is a first time director and that the content itself was powerful to inform and entertain the viewer, but there are some real big problems with the creative side.The good is that overall I really enjoyed this topic and found myself very impressed with how the story telling worked within the edit. There was a good movement that always had you waiting to see what would come next with enough content to allow people to begin to understand the topic. Starting with the case that from watching this seems to be the most misrepresented court case ever it was extremely engaging. Great use of slow reveals through a man on the street technique and a good variation of stories that attracted different audiences. Then we have the artistic side of things. The music for this movie was awful. I mean truly awful to the point that I found myself feeling like I was in a hotel lobby and the worst part was I kept coming back to it. Very poorly produced music that did not at all fit with the content. Then you have the cover ups which seemed to be a combo of i-stock photos mixed with awful visuals that reminded me of corporate videos that the editor had to cover up a cut or find a way to make more time than what they had the footage before. Then you have your animations which at times were very nice and at others that looked like they paid someone to alter a template. Really really poorly put together and all looked like they were done by different people.Similar to this was the interviews, which for the most part were shot professionally, but a few were poorly framed with incorrect lighting and made me think that someone else had to shoot some of them. This was very annoying at times.I enjoyed the content like I said above, but there were many times where things were said in interviews or content was used that really did not go with the movie. I don't know if the editor just wanted to keep it fat or what, but there are moments that just did not at all work for the content. I would say that if there is anything worth learning from this movie it's in the content and that is why I did not try and be to harsh, but the difference between an educational video and a documentary is pretty significant and to be a movie that got into the festivals it did I really really had myself scratching my head. I think of it like when you show your family something that you made. While they might be persuaded by their love for you so much that they can over look the things you did wrong in making it they will almost always tell you it looks great. Which with this it's the politics, so you could make a bad conservative movie or a republican movie and as longs as it subscribes to their beliefs you will be okay.I recommend based on the content that you check it out, but think the artistic merit is lacking.

I watched "Hot Coffee" today and was looking forward to it. I enjoy documentaries a great deal. It started off on solid note by giving the full back ground on the famous McDondalds hot coffee case. Unfortunately it goes downhill from there.We are shown a family in Nebraska that had twins. One is born with severe brain injury due to a lack of oxygen because of one umbilical cord instead of two. The family is awarded 5.6 million but Nebraska's cap law limits the award to 1.25 million dollars. While a sad story I think many people would argue that it was a birth defect medical condition that caused the injury not malpractice by the doctor and hospital. The movie makes a point about the doctor having been involved in two previous law suits. OK, but tell us how many case the doctor has been involved with in total. Is this doctor 3 for 3 or 3 for 13,289?? It makes a difference in the overall credibility of the movie.The next case up is a Democratic Mississippi lawyer/politician named Mr. Diaz that ran for the state supreme court in 2000. He won the race but was out spent by outside political groups according to the movie. Mr. Diaz then obtained personal loans guaranteed by a lawyer friend that practiced cases in front of the state supreme court. Mr. Diaz was then indicted on Federal charges of bribery and tax evasion. He was found not guilty. Does this film maker really think a judge should be taking personal loan guarantees from a law firm that does business in front of him?? He then lost his 2008 re-election bid. We are now told that Karl Rove scary right wing groups are behind the money against Mr. Diaz. I am still not sure what the problem was here other than a Democrat lost a race. Oohh.We are pretty much off the tracks by now. We are treated to Presidents Bush and Reagan talking about frivolous lawsuits. Of course, they are portrayed in a condescending manner. We are then, shown a brave President Obama standing up to the American Medical Association group. We keep getting shown edited snippets of President Bush saying bad things about tort reform over and over. At this point the movie has really become a little unhinged. But, lets continue..The last case involves every lefties favorite boogeyman "Haliburton" A woman named Jamie Leigh Jones claims that she was brutally raped while housed at a Haliburton housing area in Iraq. I had not heard of this case until I was watching the film. Lets say it didn't really pass the smell test. The gist is that she signed an employment contract the limited her legal recourse to binding arbitration. Of, course this didn't work out well. Ms. Jones also has a history of untruthfulness. Her case has since been lost at two different court levels. But, her case is taken up by Minnesota Senator Al Franken. Enough said.The film also harps on the right wing "outside" money spent to promote tort reform. The gist that this money is bad, wrong, and evil (show Karl Rove again). No mention of any "outside" left wing groups supporting non tort reform. Even though just about every person interviewed that supports the films view is from "outside" groups with names like "Judicial Justice for all" (I made that up) but you get the point.After the film, I decided to find out who Susan Saladoff is and was. She practiced as a trial lawyer on the behalf of injury victims, medical malpractice, and product liability. No bias here. Wow. How can this film be even called a documentary? It is an info-mercial for left wing trial lawyer groups.One parting thing I would love to know, who funded this one sided mess of a movie. Wanna bet it is outside left wing groups pouring money into non tort reform??? Ya think. Remember the cornerstone of the film is the outside money being spent on tort reform is bad, really bad, really really bad.One other side note. Instead of capping the victims awards, how about capping the lawyers cut to maybe 3%. Just a thought.

This film asks really great questions about motivations and gives us a frightening glimpse of the road ahead if we don't act now. In her film-making debut, Saladoff did a masterful job of unveiling the literal plot by the largest corporations in America to absolve themselves of liability by wrestling control over our justice system. By using four in depth "exhibits" to reveal the campaign, she provided the type of memorable (if not unforgettable) and persuasive stories that you can easily recall when you engage in debate on these truly important issues. Seeing this film gives you the kind of perspective that one typically only gains by looking back at events historically with one really important difference....you get to see what is really happening while there is still time to do something about it.