Dirty Money (TV Series) The Maple Syrup Heist (2018) User Reviews

Would have been better as an episode of "Rotten"

[sye_here · 6/10 · 10 April 2020]

Every other episode of this series deals with money being the product of an economic venture. Banking, real estate, etc. This was about an industry where money is the by-product. This episode would have been a weak one for Rotten, a docu-series from Netflix that deals with the food industry, but it would have fit in better there. Because "Rotten" specializes in telling the story of a food industry, they may have done a better job. So strike one (minus two stars).

Usually by the end of an episode of "Dirty Money," I don't feel confused. Here I'm still left to wonder what exactly is the beef that anti-federation folks have with the maple syrup federation. They get a lot of air time, but no party explicitly explains why having a free market is inherently better than a controlled market for the general good of maple syrup producers. Strike two (minus two stars).

I still felt entertained and educated, although the maple syrup puns did get old after a while.

Quaint, incoherent -- and often fun to watch anyway

[georgecanders · 6/10 · 29 December 2020]

Could you get away with stealing nearly $20 million of maple syrup? Would you even want to try? It's much easier to envision a comedy built around those questions -- as opposed to a serious financial-fraud documentary.

Everyone associated with this project decides to be 100% serious instead. And I can see why a lot of other reviewers got annoyed. The crew periodically loses complete track of who's relevant to the story, and who just has good screen presence while getting worked up about something totally tangential.

But why complain? The outdoor scenes are beautiful. Watching sap flow out of trees has its charming moments, too. The constant procession of indignant people with hard-to-fathom grudges gets entertaining in its own way, too.

Overall, it's like seeing a big pitcher of maple syrup getting knocked over at the breakfast table, with sweet, sticky ambrosia spreading everywhere. Let someone else clean up later -- there's finger-licking fun to be had for now.

Shaking my head

[pmpmn9 · 1/10 · 13 January 2019]

I coudn't even get past the first 20 minutes and I am Canadian, though not French Canadian. This just wasn't that interesting. And, contrary to what the other reviewer had to say, it's got nothing to do with Canadians being polite (and first of all, the polite thing comes from Britain and secondly, we're really not that polite if you get on our bad side). It just wasn't very well presented and seemed to have more to do with one woman's fight against the Federated Producer's monopoly over maple sugar growers. Yawn.

Are you kidding me?

[perlshop · 2/10 · 4 August 2018]

So far I've really enjoyed all episodes of dirty money but this episode looks like a joke compared to the rest. I guess Canadians are just too nice that their biggest problem in life is someone stealing maple syrup!? It just doesn't move me at all..

I mean compared to crimes of vw, payday loans, valient pharma, hsbc this is some sort of a parody episode. Watched it half way hoping something interesting would happen and finally gave up. I hope they found out who stole that maple syrup. May have been rats for all I care.

Seems like a joke

[noksus · 1/10 · 9 March 2020]

This episode seems like it doesn't belong. It feels like it cheapens the whole series and the severity of the other subjects/crimes. How can you put this right after a dead serious episode about HSBC and drug cartels and make it seem that a maple syrup robbery is as serious?

It's so boring

[sz-nikol-93 · 1/10 · 25 December 2019]

I don't even know what the main angle of this episode was, and compared to the others, it's just uninteresting

Joke

[vernicius · 2/10 · 6 December 2019]

This documentary could be in a comedy show instead of among of the other notorious dirty money documentaries.

Weird

[rarepeperonis · 1/10 · 18 October 2020]

I'm french canadian and theres clearly audio manipulation like they pieced bits of sentences together to make other sentences cause it sounds weird af people say stuff in a way we don't say it and feels like 2 different sentences glued together. Only when they talking off screen tho. When they are filmed it goes back to make sense.