If I had expected to be disappointed, then would I have in-turn, been disappointed?

I looked forward to this movie from the very moment that I heard a script was being written.  But in the end, it was nothing short of awful.

You can’t re-invent the light-bulb, but as Hollywood continues to re-make movies and create sequel after sequel, I wonder if I should have had any reason to expect that Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps would be anything less than a new haircut on an old dog…

I think the moment that I knew this movie had jumped the shark was when Charlie Sheen made his appearance.

Again, I ask myself, “Why should you have expected any less?”

Bad movies just seem to find those necessary ways to make themselves bad movies.  And bringing back Charlie Sheen for a cameo was exactly that.

But what bothers me the most about Charlie Sheen’s cameo was the fact that it wasn’t really Charlie Sheen acting as Bud Fox, but rather Charlie Sheen acting as Charlie Sheen – either from real life, or from his character in Two And A Half Man, which is based on himself.

He entered the frame with a gorgeous blonde on one arm, and a gorgeous brunette on the other.  That’s classic Charlie Sheen, not Bud Fox.

It was almost like an advertisement for www.charliesheen.com, or for “ABC’s number one show!”

It was needless, predictable, and had nothing to do with the plot.

But let’s start from the beginning…

Gordon Gekko gets out of jail and when the clerk hands him back his possessions and counts out “One cuff link, one wallet, one money clip…..one cell phone,” we get our first laugh of the movie – the clerk pulls out one of these:

Ha!

That was funny.  I actually LOL’d at that one.

But the only problem is that this phone is from the 1980’s, and Gordon Gekko was sent to prison in 1993.  So unless a bazillionaire happened to be using a six-year-old cell phone, then this made absolutely no sense.

I know, I know – movies are made to be entertaining, not to make complete sense all the time.  Well, I guess I just don’t like having my intelligence insulted.  If they have the billionaire main-character using a six-year-old phone just to get a single laugh out of us, then what’s stopping the character from spinning a web or leaping tall buildings in a single bound?

We’re soon introduced to the film’s main character, aka, “The kid from Transformers,” as he is shacked-up with Gordon Gekko’s daughter, who has an awful haircut and looks like a q-tip.

Although we’re never actually told anything about the kid from Transformers, such as what his position at his firm is or what he does, we’re led to believe that he’s successful when he’s given a cheque for $1.5 Million from the guy who does full-frontal in the remake of Lolita.

The kid from Transformers goes out and spends (what we’re led to believe is) $495,000 on a massive diamond ring, and keeps it in the breast pocket of his suit as he gets drunk at a nightclub.  I’d like to think that anybody smart enough to generate that kind of income is also smart enough to not keep a diamond ring, loose, in his breast pocket…

The next day, the guy who did full frontal in Lolita jumps in front of a train – something we all saw coming…..right?  Didn’t you see that coming?  The disillusioned character who was billed as the 4th or 5th star of the film and took up way too much of the first twenty minutes – didn’t you know he was going to jump into the train tracks?  I mean, why else would “Zabel” of Keller/Zabel take the subway and not a chauffeured Rolls Royce?  If you didn’t know he was going to jump in front of this train, you also likely believe that reality-tv is real…

But this was a rather important part of the movie, because it set up what little plot the film actually had.

I mean, fast forward to a really great scene – in the men’s room while the kid from Transformers is finishing up at the urinal – and Oliver Stone subtly flashes a photo of the guy from Lolita over the shoulder of the kid from Transformers, just to remind us all (in case we don’t know) that he’s upset about the old man’s death and wants revenge.

Stone’s imagery in this movie is nothing short of amazing.  And by amazing, I mean awful.

Was it really necessary to have children in the park blowing bubbles?  I get it – bubbles, like the “bubble” in the financial market that is going to burst.  But why the pathetic John-Woo-like imagery with all the bubbles throughout the whole film?

And worse than the imagery were all the cartoon-like recreations of stock-tickers and fusion-energy.  Didn’t Oliver Stone do Platoon?  Scarface?  JFK?  Now he’s directing cartoons….great…

During the course of the next hour of the movie, all the obvious plays out: the kid from Transformers goes to work for Gekko’s nemesis, the kid’s relationship with q-tip-girl breaks up, and Gekko shows his true colours again.

Who……knew….

There were so many points during this ‘film’ that I thought to myself, “I could have written my own version of this movie, read it to myself, acted it out in my living room, and had more fun.”

If there’s one thing I can’t stand about movies it’s predictability.

There was nothing in this movie that threw me for a loop.  Nothing.

It was formulaic, mundane, and like a train on a track it just stayed the safe and steady course and never veered once.

So many “little things” made me want to throw popcorn at the screen, but the guy next to me would have been mad at me for stealing his popcorn…

For example, after Gekko steals his daughter’s money and moves to England (in a timeline that makes no sense, unless a baby takes 14 months to grow in a womb…), he takes a puff of his cigar and says, “Gekko’s back!”

That’s Wall Street 2’s equivalent of “Hast La Vista, Baby!”

But look at his HAIR!  It’s back!  It’s slicked back the way it was in 1987 during the original Wall Street!

Oh, Oliver Stone, tsk, tsk!  That quote should have been “Gekko’s hair is back!”

It was at this point that I realized Gekko needed $100 Million to purchase a hair brush in order to slick back his hair again.  I mean, he sleepwalked through the first three-quarters of the movie with messy hair, so clearly he just couldn’t afford to brush his hair until he was back on top!

Speaking of hair (and since this blog post now has zero flow…), did anybody else notice that when Josh Brolin got off the Ducati, his hair was a complete mess, but two seconds later when the camera cut away from him and back again, his hair was perfect?  It was like the scene in Naked Gun, which was a spoof, when Leslie Nielsen falls through the roof and gets up completely dirty, but then runs his hand through his hair and he’s completely clean.  But, did I mention, that was a spoof?

This whole movie was a spoof to me.

How many guys do you know named Julie?  What was that all about?  I know the guy was about 80-years-old, but how about Howard or William or something?  I guess Julie was a nickname; perhaps for Jules, which is short for Julian….perhaps.  But Julie?  Was that necessary?

And were all the bird noises that old-man Julie made really necessary as well?  What was the point?  Was that for comedic relief?  Or was this Oliver Stone’s way of trying to get us all to pay more attention to Alzheimer’s?

There was just a lot of over-acting in this movie, and it didn’t stop with old-man Julie.

Gekko’s daugher – the one with the q-tip hair, had about a dozen reactionary shots in the movie.  She was always crying about something, and always making a reactionary face.

But every face was made as if she had a different type of candy in her mouth.

Whenever she was upset and whimpering, it was like she had four sour keys on her tongue and she was pressing them into the roof of her mouth to try and get rid of all the sourness at once.

And when she actually did look happy, which was rare, it was like she had a fuzzy peach slice in her mouth and she was eagerly absorbing the sugar.

Oh well, at least her character scored a moral victory for all of us guys out there when she gave back the $495,000 diamond ring and said, “It makes me feel uncomfortable.”

As it should.

I’m sorry, but that’s just how I feel.  When I get engaged, I will gladly conform to society’s oldest custom of purchasing the most successfully marketed commodity in the history of mankind for $10,000, $20,000 or whatever is the norm, but who are these women that enjoy putting a small house on their finger?  Do you know anybody with a $300,000 diamond?  It makes me want to puke.  That’s embarrassing.  Just embarrassing…

But at least the girl chewing all the sour keys and fuzzy peaches gets her life back on track at the end of the movie, when defying all logic, she accepts her father back into her life after previously disowning him forever, then making up, then having him steal $100 Million from her, all because he approaches her on the street and somewhat apologizes.

What was the moral of that story?  Men are stronger than women?  Money cures everything?  The kid from Transformers has really, really skinny legs?  Because he does, you know…

I guess since Gekko turned the $100 Million into $1.1 Billion inside of four months (all due to his hair!), we should assume that he can just buy whatever he wants, including his daughter’s love.

The end of the movie ties up rather nicely with more bubbles for imagery, and a one-year birthday party for the the baby (who took 14 months to grow) who was named after the guy who jumped in the subway.  Oh – and bad stuff happened to the bad guy, which is good.  And none of us ever saw that coming, because how many movies have endings where the hateable bad-guy character gets what’s coming to him?!?!

As a final insult to the cult-classic Wall Street, circa 1987, the sequel uses the same theme music from the first movie as the credits roll.  Now I’m worried that the next time I insert my betamax videocassette of Wall Street and hear that incredible 80’s theme music, I’ll think of the chaos that was Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Oh look, more bubbles…

But before I put this puppy to bed, I have to mention one more aspect of this movie that bothered me to no end: hindsight.

The second scene of the movie flashes “2008” across the screen so we know that we’re not talking about today, because we can’t accurately predict today.  But we can predict yesterday with absolute certainty!

The film makes a hero out of Gekko because he accurately predicts the sub-prime crisis, which I liken to my ability to predict the winners of all of last week’s football games.  I was 12/12 because I looked up the scores in the newspaper the day after the games, but don’t tell anybody!

It’s like in the movie Made with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau when Puff Daddy’s character is overheard on the phone saying, “Yeah, get me out of all those tech stocks; this bubble gonna burst.”  Well goodie for you, Puff Daddy.  While all of us were buying Nortel and Sun Systems, you were selling your long positions and minimizing your risk.  You know why?  Because the movie was made two goddam years after the bust!!

I hate movies about hindsight!  It’s too damn easy!

Well, at least this movie incorporated some of the true and very necessary facts about the sub-prime crisis, such as the revelations that the very people who created the equities in the first place were betting on them to fail and making billions of dollars in the process.

It’s just too bad it was Josh Brolin being featured as the fall-guy instead of the real-life white-hairs that will never pay for what they did, unless you consider paying $10.99 for prime rib at the 4:30PM early-bird at Sizzler, “paying”…

Phew!

I think I’m all scarasm’d out, if that’s possible!

The movie was worth my $13.75 because despite it’s awfulness, it was a “must see.”

Just like comparable movies such as Swimfan, House Party 2, and Hart’s War, I think this flick could gain momentum as it’s released onto airplanes and edited network television everywhere…