Money Monster: All The Skill in The World Can’t Polish a Turd [Review]

I’d never heard of Money Monster before I went and saw it and the trailer told me everything I needed to know about this movie.  It was exactly as advertised.   I feel bad hating on this movie actually.  It was well written and very well acted.  Julia Roberts and George Clooney kept making me feel like I was watching a better movie than I was.  But all the expertise in the world can’t make up for a faulty premise.  But as with all bad movies, I watched this so you don’t have to so I’m going to spoil this one, a lot.

Financial TV host Lee Gates and his producer Patty are put in an extreme situation when an irate investor takes over their studio.

It’s not hard to imagine how Money Monster came about.  It’s a wish fulfilment scenario that answers the question “What if we could actually get a Wall Street CEO to confess to being a douche?  What would that story look like?”   Well now I can tell you, it looks unbelievable.  Literally unbelievable. From the security guards that fail to even look in the package of a delivery man they don’t recognize to the entire production staff that gets complete Stockholm Syndrome almost immediately to the CEO (without a security staff) who leaves all the evidence of his wrongdoing on his cellphone, which he hands over to his assistant without another thought.  It makes my head hurt.

Where do I begin?  The economy doesn’t work this way.  TV shows definitely don’t work this way.  I bet you hostage situations don’t work that way either, otherwise we’d be seeing that a lot more.  Computerized money trading doesn’t work this way.  Embezzlement doesn’t work this way.  There have been large companies accused of wrongdoing (Enron, for example) and it took a team of experts months to even see it, much less be able to prove it.  Money Monster strained credulity from beginning to end.

There was one believable thing though and that was the acting.  Even as I was doubting the plot, I was believing the characters.  My goodness George Clooney has amazing chemistry with Julia Roberts and everyone else.  Christopher Denham was funny as the very put upon producer.  Jack O’Connell was good too as the desperate man who decides (correctly in this case) that holding up a television show will yield him the results he’s looking for.   

So is Money Monster worth watching?  No.  Maybe it’s just me, but I find the entire ‘Hostage Situation’ premise overdone.  It was old by the time Money Monster got its hands on it and this film had nothing fresh to add.  If you feel you know how this movie is going to look just by watching the trailer – you’re right.  It’s only surprising in its predictability.