Critics reviews

[A] garishly watchable riches-to-rags documentary: part-car crash reality show, part-dissection of the modern American dream.

You could almost be sucked into feeling sorry for [Jackie Siegel] but for director Lauren Greenfield reminding us how the other half live... As for [her] doc, it’s priceless.

The Queen of Versailles presents a fascinating case study of how the collapsing economy impacted the superrich. It will also likely drive anybody who isn’t the superrich up the wall... [The film] encourages the very worst tendencies in the audience: to sneer at the Siegels, to marvel at their tackiness, to root for their fall from grace.

A sprawling, richly detailed study of ambition, desire and the wild swings of fortune that are included in the price of the capitalist ticket... If this film is a portrait, it is also a mirror.

Greenfield's superb documentary isn't about stoking class resentment or indulging in Real Housewives-style soap opera or lifestyle porn... [The director's] refusal to pass judgment on the Siegels lends her subjects and their marriage unexpected complexity and depth.

The film shifts into something profound, a genuine quiet tragedy... To say that money can't buy happiness is a trite reduction of the complicated range of emotions [it] evokes.

Greenfield’s documentary never breaks its generally upbeat tone to dig deeper, but it benefits greatly from a tight structure and bountiful footage.

For better or worse—wait, definitely worse—this is a movie that prompts one to judge, or to be “judgey."

Excellent and unexpectedly nuanced... What might have been mere reality-TV fodder about hissable symbols of overconsumption turns out to be a three-dimensional study of a marriage... and a timely look at the middle-class American Dream on hyperdrive.

Succulently entertaining... The Queen of Versailles turns unexpectedly darker; it becomes a parable of the despair bred by overreach.

Whatever the film’s ultimate truth value, it remains a compelling glimpse into the pitfalls of bankruptcy both economic and moral.

[The Siegels] are such easy targets that you might suspect Greenfield’s motives are entirely malicious... But I think the movie transcends malice. For Greenfield, the Siegels are a brilliant metaphor for everything farkakte about the U.S. economy and the culture that shaped it.