WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
RYAN: The new Oliver Stone sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, is way too long and certainly confusifying.
CAROLINE: As two non-financial wizards, we can’t relate to or understand all the jargon that this movie contains. It takes place in 2008 when the bubble burst, and mirrors what happened with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, etc. I could follow the talk on sub-prime mortgages, but I was kind of lost for the rest of it.
RYAN: I just don’t care at all about the finance stuff. For three-quarters of this movie, I felt like I was sitting in a boring economics class. I wish it had been heavier on story and lighter on the economics rather than the other way around.
CAROLINE: I wasn’t that into either either, but then in the last hour it got really good. Something very dramatic happens, and after that I was totally invested.
RYAN: I kind of saw it coming, so I wasn’t that impressed. But here’s what I did like: all the scenes between Shia LeBeouf and Carey Mulligan, his real-life girlfriend. They have great chemistry.
CAROLINE: Yeah, I liked them together. Shia LeBeouf is good, but he’s a bit of a mush mouth at times. I wanted to be like, “Enunciate, honey! You’re in a movie!” Carey M. is very pixie-ish and cute, though she does have an annoying habit in this movie of smirking slightly in a lot of her close-ups.
RYAN: It’s her homage to Drew Barrymore.
CAROLINE: I like Carey Mulligan, and she’s a very good actress, but I don’t want the smirk to become a tic. Like the way Kristen Stewart is always biting her lip.
RYAN: I don’t love Carey’s hair this short, but I liked the color. Meanwhile, can we discuss the irony of Michael Douglas saying the word “cancer” at least twice in the movie? That kind of took me out of the moment. But he looks great, and he’s totally back in the Gordan Gekko character, for which he won the Oscar.
CAROLINE: He’s looking his age, but in a good silver foxy way. He’s had the plastic surgery rumors over the years, but if they’re true, his doctor is doing a great job. Is that his real hair though? It’s so thick and full for someone his age!
RYAN: I think so. Another thing I liked about the movie was seeing the fabulous apartments they live in and the galas they attend, like the one at the Met. I wanted to be there. The jewelry, the gowns and the plastic surgery were so over the top. That was my favorite scene in the movie. And Charlie Sheen makes a cameo in it too.
CAROLINE: I totally had money envy during the entire movie. I wanted to live in those apartments, go to that party, wear those earrings. The opulence is amazing. It makes you start thinking, “Maybe greed is good.”
RYAN: [laughs’ Josh Brolin is decent as the bad guy, but I feel like this kind of role is becoming a little typical for him. He’s the go-to guy for the handsome but hateful character.
CAROLINE: I like him in general, but he didn’t do much for me in this movie. It’s all about Michael Douglas and the other two.
RYAN: Director Oliver Stone gave himself a cameo in a couple of scenes, which didn’t annoy me as much as when M. Night Shyamalan does it.
CAROLINE: Meanwhile, Eli Wallach looks like he crawled out of a crypt to be in this movie. I know he’s a legend, but man is he old! I don’t even know how he made it to the set.
RYAN: He’s got one foot in the grave, for sure.
— BOTTOM LINE —
CAROLINE: We’re clearly not the target demo for this movie, but I can say as an avid movie-goer that I was bored for a good chunk of this film. It gets much more interesting in the second half, thankfully.
RYAN: There’s nothing genius about this movie. Because it’s a sequel to a film that was so groundbreaking, I was expecting more. I kind of wish I’d seen the original Wall Street again more recently to get me in the mood. It’s also 2 hours and 13 minutes long, which is just too much. There’s a motorcycle riding scene where I turned to you and said, “Oh, so now it’s a boy movie?”
CAROLINE: At the end of the day, this movie was too full of economics for me to truly enjoy; but it has good acting and some great dramatic moments that made it at least somewhat worthwhile.
— RATING —
