Surprised that there's no thread on this yet...here's my two cents: I’d give it a B. It certainly didn’t live up to its predecessor. The old Wall Street was decadence; it was about blowjobs in the back of a limousine. This new Wall Street is about family, marriage, and babies. Not the same. The real Wall Street won’t embrace this film like it did the last. No 16 year old kid is going to be inspired to become an arbitrageur or prop trader from Shia Lebaouf’s character. The old Wall St. criticized the industry strictly through a portrayal of its greed and culture. This film has populist sentiment woven all through the scenes and dialogue, where it seems like the only point of some lines is to editorialize. The whole story structure changed as well. The old Wall St. was a rise and fall story; the ending was, for the most part, dark. This is a rise, fall, rise story (at least for the three main characters) and ends happily ever after (quite unbelievably I might add), with the final scene being a children’s birthday party….I mean…c’mon. And besides…who wants to see Gordon Gekko as the good guy?
I really want to see this. Do you think the performance by Michael Douglas was weakended by his throat cancer? He looked pretty drawn on the red carpet recently.
No. I'm pretty sure he wasn't diagnosed when he made this movie. I give the movie a C+/B-. It was decent; better than most movies made these days, but yes it doesn't hold a candle to the original (which is a classic in every sense of the word). I also thoroughly dislike Shia LaBeouf and I have no idea why Hollywood has made him their "golden boy".
I'm glad Gordon started to appreciate time more than money, I always try to tell people who stay indoors that.
Saw the movie yesterday, it was decent. No where near as good as the original. Not enough of Gekko. Ending kind of sucked. Matt
I think the DealBook guest analysts missed the initial "bonus" scene. My take wasn't that it was as much a bonus as it was a parachute for a guy the company founder was fond of. As for the movie, it was l-o-n-g for the sake of it. I liked two lines, but the rest was Zzzzz... nowhere near as good as the original.
Don't mean to be a dweeb, but are there any sex scenes in the is movie that could prevent me from taking my 12 y/o to see it? Steve
