The Bonfire of the Vanities

A very under-rated and under appreciated movie. No other movie out there quite captures the phony and insincere hypocrisy of today's media and advocacy groups better than this one. The only people who don't like this film are the ones who the film is satirizing. This movie, like Hollywood Shuffle, was way ahead of its time. Like most accurate and truthful books and films, they are rarely appreciated in their day because the brutal honesty and truthfulness of what they have to say is too painful to openly accept and admit. It is a classic satire and incredibly well-written and well-acted. I would recommend this film to anyone.

It is absolutely the very BEST portrait of our current culture that I have ever seen. The writer was decades ahead of his time in seeing through all the saccharin sentimentality and superficial razor thin concern most people display for the eternal greed and vanity that drives them. Hell, now we have parents of murdered children bumping into each other to get their faces on "Good Morning America." How tragically pathetic. Great movie.

Profound exploration of the anatomy and course of a greedy, ambitious and self-centered life, in its various forms (through several characters with unique forms of greed and ambition and lust). Various people get their just dues in humorous, often unexpected ways. Really satisfying and clever movie.

So many people have been getting down on this movie, and I for one think it is totally unjustified. Forget the book! This is nothing like the book! This is a movie, that has a very delicate dark humor, that just seems to whiz over peoples heads. Take a deep breath, and enjoy the light way every aspect of this movie treats it subject matter with.

Brian De Palma's over-hyped, over-expensive, would-be blockbuster was one of the more notorious flops of the decade: a fifty million dollar write-off all but ignored by the movie-going public, and for good reason. The novel by Tom Wolfe may have been a blistering social satire highlighting everything wrong with the Reagan 1980s: political corruption, corporate greed, media distortion, self-serving publicity, and so forth. But on the big screen it only served to illustrate everything wrong with modern American movie-making: executive interference, artistic compromise, and the fatal miscasting of bankable stars in inappropriate roles. Asking nice guy Tom Hanks to portray an arrogant, insensitive Wall Street yuppie ruined by a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx was a bad enough decision, but rewriting characters just to accommodate Bruce Willis (a jaded English journalist?) and Morgan Freeman (a fiery Jewish judge?) renders most of Wolfe's intended satire meaningless. The film died a quiet death at the box office, but it at least succeeded as a textbook Hollywood literary adaptation: dumbing down a controversial bestseller to make it more accessible to semi-literate filmgoers.

Before I talk about the movie itself, I'd like to get ugly for a quick sec.. I am sick and tired of people whining that a movie isn't as good as a book. First of all, we all already know that 99% of the time a book is not equally rendered in film. How can it? The physiological experience of reading is totally different from that of taking in audio-video. Hello? A book often can't fit into a 90 minute movie anyway, and we all complain when a director tries to stretch our minute-rice attention span more than 2 hours, which would allow the space to capture more of the subtle nuances that we love in a book. If you want to read the book, do us all a favour, don't watch a movie, go read the #@%$ book. Does anyone think that a painting could represent each facet of a poem? They are two separate and distinct mediums. Sheesh. Now, book aside, this movie is trying to talk about an issue. And it does so quite fine. If you need the book to get the message, that's your business. Each character was a caricature, a spoof, hyperbolized to help drive home the message that truth is often irrelevant to the socio-political motives behind people's actions. From the "assistant DA" looking for recognition to the "hymie racist" angling for the office of mayor to the "good reverend" looking for sympathy for his people (and a payday) to Fallow trying to save his career to McCoy's lawyer who has to patiently deal with his naive client who doesn't grasp that his life is insignificant to all those who somehow have generated a vested interest in his demise... I got the message, it didn't take me the 6 hours or two days (or however long it would take me to make time to read the book), and I had some fun.

Tom Wolfe's sprawling novel about the aftershocks of a hit-and-run in 1980's New York set out to capture the corruption and self- promotion that seemed to dominate the decade, with every power player in the city, and every hanger-on trying to achieve personal triumph, latching on to the media and cultural frenzy to benefit their own personal agenda. It's a remarkable novel; bleakly hilarious but meticulously detailed. A movie adaptation was always going to be dangerous territory, and Brian De Palma's resulting film, that flopped both critically and commercially, is a confused mess. The complete failure of the film may be somewhat cruel and not wholly deserved, but De Palma goes for all-out comedy, failing to grasp Wolfe's subtle satire completely. Tom Hanks plays self-styled 'master of the universe' Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street broker who enjoys every material comfort that life can offer, living in his huge apartment with his ditsy wife Judy (Kim Cattrall). During an eventful night with his mistress Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith), they take a wrong turn while heading back to her apartment and end up in South Bronx. Sherman gets out of the car to clear the road when he is approach by two black youths, and a misunderstanding leads to Ruskin accidentally running one of them over. They flee the scene, but once the story of a rich white man almost killing a poor black kid breaks, the likes of Reverend Bacon (John Hancock), a Harlem religious and political leader, Jewish district attorney Abe Weiss (F. Murray Abraham) and hard-drinking journalist Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis) rear their heads to twist the ongoing s**t-storm to their own benefit. Despite some nice tracking shots and sets that really do capture the tacky glamour of the 80's, the movie's biggest downfall is the casting. The two leads, Hanks and Willis, are woefully miscast. McCoy is a loathsome character, a WASP-ish high-roller in an increasingly capitalist country, but Hanks is one of the most likable actors around. He looks visibly uncomfortable in a thinly- written role, and only takes control of his character in a scene in which he clears his apartment by unloading a shotgun played mainly for laughs, which at this stage of his career was Hanks's shtick. Fallow in the novel is a manipulative con-man, twisting the unravelling story through his newspaper in order to keep his job and make a nice paycheck along the way. But De Palma only seems to have picked up on his heavy drinking, meaning that Willis swings a bottle around and narrates the story, playing the role of spoon-feeder without playing an active role in story or convincing as someone who could get to his position. But then again, De Palma's movie doesn't exist in the real world. Arguably, the ensemble of characters in Wolfe's novel were caricatures, but they were well-rounded characters, and being inside their heads meant that we could understand their motives, something the movie entirely ignores. So we get the likes of Bacon, Weiss, lawyer Tom Killian (Kevin Dunn) and Assistant District Attorney Kramer (Saul Rubinek), all key players in the novel, reduced to scowling or bumbling onlookers, while McCoy squirms for our amusement and Fallow tells us what we're supposed to be thinking. Occasionally its an all-out pantomime, which would be forgivable it was funny or insightful. Yet when Wolfe calls for pantomime at the climax, the movie delivers a ridiculous speech spoken by Judge White (Morgan Freeman), informing us that decency is what your grandmother taught you. www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

The back cover for the DVD calls this movie "hilarious" and "the quintessential story of the go-for-it '80s." In truth, it is neither. The Bonfire of the Vanities is, however, funny in parts, poignant in parts, and entertaining throughout. The protagonist is Sherman McCoy, a man whose one fatal flaw (an affair we know of from the beginning) leads to the downfall from his envious position as a "Master of the Universe." Tom Hanks gives an excellent performance and shows real emotion in bringing this highly plausible character to life. Unfortunately, his character is the only one with enough depth to be realistic. Even Morgan Freeman's Judge White, representing a refreshing dose of intelligence and honesty in the film, is perhaps too good to be believed. All of the other characters are mere caricatures, appearing too greedy, too pretentious, too self-absorbed, or too flighty to be believed. Bruce Willis might have made himself an exception as well, but I feel he simply lacked enough screen time to flesh out the different faces he had to show. Nevertheless the story is very well told. If the other characters appear less than convincing, accept them as colorful background for McCoy, who is the real focus anyway. There are numerous laughs, and the other characters represent elements that are definitely present in society - even if not to the extent shown here. Wolfe's story is entertaining enough to make this movie worth seeing. And it might even make you think twice about the names you see next time you open a newspaper. 7 / 10 stars.

As someone who has both read the novel and seen the film, I have a different take on why the film was such a flop. First, any comparisons between novel and film are purely superficial. They are two different animals. The novel is probably intended as a satire, but it arrives as a cross between tragedy and polemic instead. Any comedic elements such as those which later formed the stylistic basis of the film version are merely incidental to the author's uniformly cynical thrust. And lest the omnipresent white suit of the author fool you into thinking this is another Mark Twain, think again. A more apt literary precedent would be the spectre of Ambrose Bierce in a top hat and tails. Tom Wolfe is equal parts clown and hack, more celebrity than author, always looking for new grist for his self-absorbed mill. It is therefore no wonder that the excellent production skills and direction lavished on the making of the film were doomed from the start. Unlike true satire, which translates very well into film, polemics are grounded not in universally accessible observations on some form or other of human behavior, but in a single-minded attack on specific people -- whether real or fictional straw men -- who have somehow earned the wrath of the writer. Any effort to create a successful filmed story or narrative from such a beginning must have a clean start, free of the writer's influence or interference. Having said that, I too find fault with the casting. It is not merely that incompetents like Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith fail to measure up, but that real talents like Tom Hanks, F. Murray Abraham, and Morgan Freeman are either totally wasted or given roles that are mere caricatures. There is enough topical material here for a truly great film satire, but it fails to come even close.

I finally saw this, having read the book and put off watching the movie. I should have kept putting it off. It honestly is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, in every sense of the word, in all departments. A rare achievement for a film. Both Tom and Bruce are woefully miscast and if there was a motivation in any of the characters, I am still digging for it. All the depth of the novel completely vanished from sight. Did anybody even remotely associated with the film READ the book??? I suspect Melanie Griffith might have come close, her character's greed, dishonesty and avarice shines through. Morgan Freeman (and I am a long time admirer) overacts to the point of nausea. Hanks is far too nice for the part of Sherman. He just about sinks under the weight of the part. I mean nice Tommy as a "master of the universe?" A brutal bond trader? I kept watching, I had no hope it would improve, it was akin to watching an accident at the side of the road. You want to drive away, you can't. You can't define what's keeping you there, the gore, the smashed and broken bodies, the pitiful moaning? 3 out of 10 for this absolute mess of a flick.