Wednesday, 20 July 2016

On Independence Day: Resurgence


A painful watch where the only person who has any fun is Jeff Goldblum.

On Money Monster

In 2012 John Stewart grilled Jim Cramer on The Daily Show about CBC’s irresponsible reporting on the stock market, where a reality was being presented to an uninformed public that was not what was actually going on in the stock market.

Money Monster starts with this idea, with George Clooney in the Cramer role and one of the uninformed audience members hitting back in the form of a bomb and a gun. The idea is good and needs a film to explore it. Unfortunately, it’s not Money Monster.

What begins as one good idea with decent characters, moves into several areas and suffers by not really being too critical of any. The blame that should be laid at the feet of 24 news and social networking for blurring the lines between actual and fantasy is where Money Monster ends up, whilst still trying to investigate the stock market. Just last year, Nightcrawler (2015) took this on with impressive results.


Money Monster has its heart in the right place and it is commendable that it attempts to take on as many of today’s problems as it does, but it would be a more critical film if it stuck with the same fight that Stewart took on.