Review of Money Monster (2016) by Chad T — 21 May 2016

Astoundingly bad, on so many levels.

First, Foster, the director is a typical Hollywood airhead completely devoid of any genuine knowledge about the financial world and how it operates. Anybody who has been in the unpleasant situation having to suffer some actor/musician/dancer/painter pontificating mindlessly about matters of commerce, economics, or politics knows what I mean; for some strange reason, "artists" who have spent most of their lives romping around the playground of life somehow imagine they have pragmatic perspectives about the real world when most rarely have a clue. Foster is one of those sheltered "artists" who needs to find herself a real 9-5 job outside of Hollywood because, being an actress since childhood, she has no concept of any form of reality outside the entertainment sphere.

Second, the casting of the film is preposterous. Two of the weakest actors in Hollywood = Clooney and Roberts and neither personality can play any roles other than themselves; even in that regard, they fail miserably in the tasks assigned them.

In the case of Clooney, he does not begin to capture the vile nature of his real life exemplar, namely the repugnant, Jim Cramer. I had an uncle (deceased) who fell under Cramer's contemptible, smirky, spell, failing to realize that the scammer is a notorious front for the investment banks and funds, as they secure small investor counter party suckers for their trades. Several years ago, Cramer managed to convince my dead uncle to place a huge slice of his monies into gold stocks just ahead of their dive off of a cliff. My dead uncle was ruined financially and, on behalf of all gold investors, he swore on his deathbed he would return to destroy Cramer, his entire family, and all his partners in crime. In his final hours on the planet, my uncle could barely speak but he managed just enough strength to rasp those last words in the form of such a bitter curse. it was very disturbing to watch, like a scene from a horror movie. To this day, the images and sounds of the thing haunt me and that is why, although conceptually the film has great potential, it truly fails insofar as depicting the horrifying financial rape perpetrated by Wall Street types and those like the monstrous Cramer who serve as their collusive media proxies.

That is why you don't cast Clooney to portray such disgusting evil, instead you cast a genuinely great actor, a malicious bald snake like Ed Harris, who knows how to reveal a dark side of the human personality like no other. As for Julia Roberts, I am convinced that she must have some private scandalous dirt against Clooney forcing him to insist she be part of the package in most of his films because, as weak as Clooney might be, no other actress compares to Roberts insofar as a complete absence of talent and a sad deficit of beauty.