It's not a bad watch, and fundamentally it's not a bad introduction to the topic but I think it lacks perspective.

There's tons of stuff to cover with WeWork, and a 104 mins runtime will force you to make tough editorial choices.

The doc takes its time to paint a picture of Adam's character. Lots of people were wondering if he was dishonest or just crazy. The doc doesn't fully answer that for you but it definitely gives you some pointers. I think that's good.

The rise of WeWork is described in a way that seems almost passive, like it just happened to then. It fails to convey what they did to get off the ground beyond "Adam is a good salesman", which was admittedly a huge part of it.

After so much time spent on Adam and the rise of the company, the canceled IPO and subsequent events are only a small part of the doc, when they should be the centerpiece.

But ultimately, what made this documentary just okay for me is that it lacked what makes others like The Inventor (Theranos) or The Smartest Guys in the Room (Enron) so great: contextualisation. The sense that it's not just a one-off story of spectacular failure from an individual or a group, that even beyond the ripple effects that aren't mentioned (for employees, investors, banks, entrepreneurs and so many more) this is a lesson for private companies and the market at large.

From my own interest in the topic, I know there were systemic reasons to the rise and fall of WeWork, but the documentary fails to explore that, or even to bring up those questions. Could the next WeWork already be right in front of us? What if Adam isn't that different from other startup/tech CEOs? Would WeWork have chugged along fine if they didn't have to go public?

Paradoxically, a good documentary leaves you with more questions than you had at the beginning. It spikes your curiosity to look into the topic more. But this felt more like entertainment, more Fyre Fest doc than Enron doc.