Money Monster isn’t billed as a comedy (in fact, it’s supposed to be a thriller), but it is still one of the silliest films I’ve seen in ages.
Lee Gates (George Clooney) is a cable TV investment personality of the Jim Cramer school, with a shtick that includes dancing girls, funny hats, crazy film clips, party noisemakers, and outlandish recommendations that often turn out to be profitable investments. He doesn’t think much about his viewers’ actual profits and losses because he never sees his viewers — that is, until Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) shows up on the set with a figurative axe to grind and a literal gun in his pocket. He also has a funny explosive vest to go with Lee’s funny hat. He makes Lee wear it.
We are expected to believe that Budwell, the terrorist, would be able to wander onto a live set, simply because he is dressed like a deliveryman and carries a couple of cardboard boxes.
I’ll warn you here that this review is going to contain a few spoilers, but knowing some of the plot twists is not going to ruin the film for you; it’s pretty much ruined on its own, and these are mad meanderings, not genuine twists. Besides, I don’t recommend that you waste your money or your time on this monster of a movie, and revealing some of the plot is the only way I can demonstrate to you just how silly and unbelievable the premise is.
Hollywood will go to great lengths to cast aspersions on Wall Street, business, and the free market, even greenlighting a movie with a script with more holes than a Chuck E. Cheese Whack-A-Mole (and a lot less entertaining). First we are expected to believe that Budwell, the terrorist, would be able to wander onto a live set, simply because he is dressed like a deliveryman and carries a couple of cardboard boxes. Sorry, folks, the days of Cary Grant sneaking into the boss’s office carrying a florist’s bouquet are long gone, and security at a television station is much tighter than that.
Then we are expected to believe that the cameras would continue to roll and the signal would continue to be broadcast while a lunatic holds a gun to the head of a nationally known journalist — or anyone, for that matter. Regardless of what the terrorist (and the voyeuristic television consumer) might be demanding, someone — anyone — would have pulled that plug immediately.
We are also expected to believe that Kyle invested all his money — all his money — in a single hedge fund. The SEC has rules about that. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, “qualified investors” must have a net worth of at least a million dollars, not counting their personal residence, or an income of at least $200,000, in order to purchase shares in risky investment vehicles such as the one in the script. Kyle makes $14 an hour as a sanitation worker. He is not a qualified investor. The hedge fund would not have accepted Kyle’s money. George Clooney and Jodie Foster (the film’s director) probably don’t realize this because they have managers who invest their money for them. They’re qualified investors; they just aren’t qualified to play with investors in the movies.
Next is Lee Gates’ ridiculous solution to Kyle’s problem. It seems that Kyle invested his money in a hedge fund that Lee recommended a few weeks ago, and the fund’s price tanked, taking Kyle’s money with it. Lee turns to the camera and asks his viewers to start buying the stock in order to pump up the price for Kyle and his fellow losers. First, viewers would smell a rat if a showman like Gates made such an outlandish plea. Remember Soupy Sales? “Kids, take a dollar out of your mother’s purse and send it to Soupy at this address . . .”
Kyle's girlfriend bawls him out and dares him to pull the trigger on the bomb — while she is in the studio. Who in the world would be that crazy?
More importantly, Lee’s idea wouldn’t help Kyle or the others who have lost money, even if the stock did return to previous levels. Stock prices rise and fall as new buyers purchase shares from current owners. It’s the ultimate example of supply and demand. In this case, the people who sold on the way down don’t own any shares anymore, so they aren’t going to get their money back, even if prices climb to the sky. They’re just going to feel worse. The only people who could make money on Lee’s new deal are the ones who buy at the bottom and sell at the new top. And believe me, Lee Gates would be investigated for investment fraud after these shenanigans were over. (Assuming he made it out of the exploding vest in one piece.)
The cops are just as stupid. They bring Kyle’s girlfriend to the studio to talk some sense into him and calm him down, even though they know she’s fit to be tied about him. And she’s just as stupid. Instead of calming him down, she bawls him out and dares him to pull the trigger on the bomb — while she is in the studio. Who in the world would be that crazy? And then there is the usual Hollywood inanity of having SWAT teams or, in this case, bomb squads enter a highly volatile location without wearing helmets. I know, it’s a film technique considered necessary so that we (the audience) can see their pretty faces while they talk.
In such situations, we’re supposed to suspend our disbelief, and usually I do. But in this movie my disbelief was suspended so far above reality that I became positively giddy from lack of oxygen.
The denouement is just as ridiculous as the build-up. We are supposed to believe that the greedy director of the hedge fund has manipulated a mining strike in South Africa in order to buy low and then sell high when the strike is called off, but a glitch in his plan resulted in a loss of $800,000,000. That’s a lot of platinum for two weeks’ digging.
I’m sure that George Clooney, who produced the film as well as starred in it, thinks he’s doing the world a big favor by pointing out the evils of greed and investing, but all he did with Money Monster is point out his own monstrous ignorance. He still has the dark swoony eyes, though. Maybe he should leave the social justice films for a while and make a nice romantic comedy.
