Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps Is About as Insightful as The Other Guys

The long-gestating sequel to Oliver Stone's 1986 classic Wall Street has arrived, and it's definitely its father's daughter, complete with motorcycles, Charlie Sheen (in cameo) and the Talking Heads on the soundtrack. But the picture it paints of corporate greed has shifted from the anything-goes attitude of the 1980s to the finger-pointing blame game of the 2008 financial crisis, and while it tries to show us how stock prices are just as sensitive to rumor-mongering now as they were then, it doesn't really explain to us what caused the collapse. (I think Josh Brolin did it? Maybe?) Mostly, the old money guys sit around long tables and yell at each other for creating bad debt and bad credit and nobody seems to know where "the bottom" is. There's a bit of a revenge story going on, but it's ultimately not very important, and for the most part the movie just isn't as good as The Other Guys, which managed to be funny, informative and action-packed.

Sure, The Other Guys was only marginally about the economy, and the exact details of how Steve Coogan's character had lost billions of dollars belonging to one company and several developing nations are vague, but a last-minute set of diagram-heavy credits more than makes up for that. Through a series of informative charts, we got a detailed presentation on the rising salaries and bonuses of our nation's executives, both before and after the government bailout. Meanwhile, Oliver Stone's stock charts were mostly tracings of the New York City skyline, which, while pretty, were probably highly inaccurate. We also got some very detailed animations explaining how nuclear fusion works, since that's what Shia LaBeouf's character was investing heavily in. And while I give mad props to anyone looking into alternative sources of energy... who gives a rat's ass? Seriously, there was no reason for all of the fusion talk that we got. Just say Shia likes alternative energy, and we're golden.

Also, the companies who are going under in Wall Street 2: If These Walls Could Talk have to plead their cases to other big businessmen at the Federal Reserve to get a bailout, while the company in The Other Guys seems to get one just by asking for it. Clearly, the latter is the more accurate scenario, right? They just give those out to anyone? Not to mention that there are no massive shootouts in Wall Street 2, and everyone knows that gunfights make for a better movie in almost every case. The movie has to have incredibly random motorcycle street races just to rouse the audience out of near-catatonia, while The Other Guys starts out with a car crashing into a double-decker bus. Sorry, Wall Street 2: Financial Boogaloo -- you thought you were too big to fail, but you needed more diversity in your portfolio.

Did you see Wall Street 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear? Let us know what you thought below, then see the Michael Douglas sequels we don't want to see!

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