Movie Review: Money Monster

Money Monster is a great idea for a movie. Obviously, the entire idea for the screenplay came out of watching CNBC and more specifically Jim Cramer who is the star of "Mad Money". While watching this movie I remember asking myself, could something like this happened in real life, when you consider the many commentators who come on CNBC giving bad and inaccurate advice or talk up or down the stock market based on either their opinion or their desire to make money in either direction? The horrible year 2008 which created a "generational low" in the stock market in March 2009 due to the housing crisis is another example of the insanity of the stock market which is made worse by sensational journalism. The year 2000 bear market that started in March 2000 and lasted 30 months is another example of expert commentators who come on CNBC and spout totally inaccurate predictions that create a frenzy that would never be as bad if there were more stringent controls over what people are allowed to say on Television financial news shows.

In my opinion, the advice and commentators on CNBC had a great deal to do with accelerating the insane ups and downs of the stock market since 1998 and which in the last two years have included flash crashes, where the stock market drops a thousand points or more in one day. Recently, and several times before this, billionaire Carl Icahn has gone on CNBC to make comments about stocks either positive or negative that everybody knows will have a great affect on the stock market overall as well as the stocks themselves. Recently Icahn announced that he sold all of this APPLE stock and soon after the stock went down many more points and brought the stock market down with it. Clearly, this should be considered an illegal practice because the odds are high that Icahn was either buying shares or shorting them to make money at the expense of other stockholders .

As far as Money Monster, George Clooney plays the Jim Cramer character and I think much of the over the top dancing around before this fictional financial show was a bit much, especially since Cramer himself does not dance around on his show at all. Very soon into the movie Cramer is held at gunpoint by a very angry young man who lost 60K in a stock that Clooney's character told his audience was "as safe as a savings account". From this point on, about 15 minutes into the movie, the rest of the film had to do with things we have seen many times before on TV police drama's, ie. trying to get this hostage situation resolved, which in this case also included a bomb attached to Clooney's chest. Julia Roberts is also in this movie as the producer of the financial TV show and we learn that she is going to leave the show in a few weeks, due to the problems with Clooney's character. Jodie Foster directed this movie, which overall was just good but could have been great. The young man who holds Clooney hostage was played well by Jack O'Connell although the foul language and the overuse of the "F" word I thought were overdone. While I do recommend this movie, its a shame that many of the plot points were not believable but the acting was good and the story was compelling enough.

Money Monster - IMDB

Jim Cramer Does not beat the market



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