Wall Street 2 - Money is a Bitch

According to Gordon Gecko, "money is a bitch, she sleeps in the bed with you with one eye open. Next thing you know, she might be gone forever.” Hmmm, we think we met that girl before, but she left and maxed our credit cards - what a wench. But you know what is even worse than a one-eyed bitch This movie - that's what. Wall Street 2 will go down as one of the worst films of 2010. It wasn't just bad - it was cinematically bankrupt and needed a bailout - but none came.

So here's a question to Oliver Stone? Why go a make a simply awful sequel to a truly great movie? Could it be - greed? Yes, that's it, greed is good, you've been co-opted by the ghost of Gorden Gecko in a sort of reverse Scrooge action.

There are primary three elements to any movie:

1. The premise
2. The script
3. The acting
   

In Wall Street 2 - none of these seemed to make sense. First, the premise was ridiculous, Gordon Gecko, supposedly the genius player becomes the only person other than Martha Stewart to actually get locked up for insider trading - nope, we're not buying it. Then we've got this goofy relationship thing with his daughter - the girl seems to have a terminal tear duct disorder. Whenever she's not crying like Niagara falls she looks like she's about to. Somehow, Shia Labeouf is in love with her, we assume because she's so sensitive and all and she just happens to be sitting on millions in cash. Without giving away too much - Gecko proves he's still top lizard on Wall Street but that he's also got some sort of soul too.

All the while, someone decides to provide some sort of educational overview on fusion power and the green economy. This movie was all over the place - the script was just awful and the acting followed suit. We wanted our 7 dollar per ticket investment back - but it was gone into the recession that lasted 90 minutes and never seemed to end - did we say we really hated this movie?

Oliver Stone's imagination wasn't nearly creative enough to encompass the mega-conspiracies that now characterize the real Wall Street - circa 2010.

Worst of all, though, this movie was pretentious as hell. The money is a bitch line was the opening volley in a barrage of prison meets Wall Street philosophical posturing which got downright silly pretty quick. Here are some other forgettable quotes from Wall Street 2:

• “You are the Ninja Generation. No income. No job. No assets.” (The Ninja Turtle generation to be exact)
  
• “The mother of evil is speculation.” (then who is the father?)
  
• “Greed makes the bartender buy three houses.” (Have you met any greedy bartenders?)
  
• “Bucks + Steroids = Leverage” (are they referring to Starbucks?)
  
• “The family business is payback.” (sounds like some families we know)
  
• “A fisherman always sees another fisherman from afar.” (we wonder what they talk about)
  
• “Moral hazard is when they take your money and then are not responsible for what they do with it.” (we did like this one)
  
• “Insurance is like getting kids to buy crack in the playground.” (we're really not seeing this)
  
• “Parents are the bones where children sharpen their teeth.” (good thing we're all fat now)
  
• “Are you a bee? Do you like to sting people?” (Dora does Wall Street?)
  

With wisdom like that , who needs ignorance?

Is Wall Street out of Control? You bet - at least these guys were a
bit more entertaining in how they portrayed it...

-- oh and by the way Mel Gibson is still crazy. Who knows maybe he had is money with Bernie Madoff, that might explain it.


Copyright 2010, Raving Reviews

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A Confused Political Thriller

With the backdrop of the current presidential election and economic turmoil, an action-packed political thriller is just the sort of thing that should play well at the Box Office, and thusfar Eagle Eye has done quite well. The film, produced by Mr. Spielberg and starring Shia LaBeouf while scoring quite high in terms of vehicles destroyed, scored few points in regards to common sense and originality.

The beginning of the film was remarkably similar to the opening sequences of The Matrix, with some mysterious female voice leading our hero out of custody after initially being caught for something he really wasn't involved with. In some ways, the most notable feature of the movie was Shia LaBeouf's post Miami Vice facial hair - present on the main character as a sign of his general lack of proper socialization, and absent on his identical twin who of course is a prodigy and role model. This is not too far removed from the unbelievably tired Evil Twin cliche and dragged down credibility for the story from the moment it was introduced. It is fairly safe to say that we could predict our hero's redemption within the first ten minutes of the beginning of the picture.

And unfortunately, that's the pattern followed throughout most of the film - unoriginal cliches, both in dialog and in action. The nemesis of the film, Eagle Eye, can only be described as the love child of HAL and Skynet, but with a political agenda. Worse than though, I'm fairly certain that they used the exact same set for the sinister "Eagle Eye" computer room from Minority Report, the one where Tom Cruise did his touchscreen analysis while be able to look out the window down to where the "precogs" were floating around in a giant jacuzzi. (the fact both films were produced by Mr. Spielberg adds more credence to this possibility). So, we're not only getting the same worn themes, we have to view them on the same sets as well!

The most distressing part of the movie is its complete lack of common sense though. One would expect a super-intelligence, even one that is slightly deranged, to understand the basics of the political system it is so intently trying to manipulate. Late in the movie, Shia determines that the unseen force driving him through one car chase after another is a rogue computer (while watching clips on HD TVs at the local Circuit City). He makes the leap after the computer starts quoting from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with a focus on "We the People," so naturally we assume that this populist message is coming from a computer?

To make a long and illogical story short, Shia figures out that the computer is a Hollywood Liberal type who thinks that the executive branch has overstepped its authority and has decided to eliminate the whole branch. But wait, the computer flip-flops (Eagle Eye ought to be one of our presidential candidates) and decides to blow up the executive branch while they are sitting with the entire legislative branch in Congress during the State of the Union Address. And then, get this, the liberal anti-establishment computer decides to designate the Secretary of Defense as the new president. Does anyone else find this a bit odd, the computer in its efforts to protect the people, blows up their legislature, keeps the office of the president and places the military in control?

I think we ought to have a requirement for anyone attempting to write political thrillers to attend at least one semester of a Junior High School level civics class so they have at least a rudimentary understanding of our political system.






Copyright 2008, Raving Reviews™

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