Money Monster (2016) * *

Directed by:  Jodie Foster

Starring:  George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Giancarlo Esposito, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe

Money Monster is two different movies ungainly meshed together.     It starts out as a vibrant behind-the-scenes look at a high wattage Jim Cramer type of financial news program, but ends up as another movie about a tense hostage standoff.     The former movie would have held my interest longer.     The movie Money Monster becomes is an obvious expression of outrage by working class folks against corporations that make money while they lose everything in stock price drops or pension raids.     Think of it as Occupy Wall Street without the protesters blocking traffic.  

I enjoyed the first ten minutes immensely.    George Clooney plays Lee Gates, who hosts a daily show where he gleefully throws out stock tips using colorful screens, songs, and gadgets to propel the shtick.    Make no mistake,  it is shtick.    Bates is at heart an entertainer first, which doesn't resonate with those who take his advice as gospel and invest based on that advice.    One of the stocks Gates recommends recklessly to viewers is Ibis, which loses $800 million in one day thanks to a "computer glitch", which is of little comfort to those who lost their life savings.  

One of the people who lost everything is Kyle Budwell (O'Connell), who easily infiltrates show security and holds Gates and his crew at gunpoint on national television.     He forces Gates to wear a vest that holds a bomb and Kyle keeps his finger on the detonator.     Kyle wants to know why the company lost $800 million, or more importantly to him, his life savings of $60,000.     Ibis CEO (West) is AWOL aboard a corporate jet, so his PR director (Balfe) is left holding the bag.     Her explanations do not inspire understanding or confidence in Kyle.

Now, we have a movie where Gates (with help from his director Patty Fenn (Roberts) behind the glass) tries to calm the gunman down while trying to figure a way out of this mess.     Kyle makes empty threats to shoot or let go of the detonator while Gates bargains for his life and the life of his crew.     Gates begins his own undercover investigation of Ibis, which uncovers predictable results.    You mean the CEO embezzled $800 million under the guise of a computer mathematical algorithm in order to finance a scheme that would enrich him somehow?     Don't stop the presses.    This is not a job for Lee Gates, but for Captain Obvious.    

Whatever little tension is provided by the initial standoff evaporates when Gates and Kyle walk several blocks (with police and the world watching) keeping up the façade of hostage/kidnapper to confront the CEO before a press conference.     Everything unravels and Money Monster becomes silly.    I think the direction the movie chose involving Kyle's pregnant girlfriend was meant to inspire sympathy for Kyle, but it succeeds only in making him look like a clueless putz.    

Clooney plays charismatic slicksters with the best of them.     He is the only thing Money Monster really has going for it.    Jack O' Connell, the English actor from Unbroken, lays on a thick Noo Yawk accent, but undergoes so many character swerves from the writers that we realize he is just a creature of the plot.     When was the last time Julia Roberts looked like she was having any fun in a movie?    Years ago, people fell in love with her radiant smile.     These days, she looks unhappy to be forced to learn her lines.     She and Clooney worked together in the first two Ocean's Eleven movies and Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but besides initial glimpses of chemistry, Roberts looks like she would rather be elsewhere.    Clooney carries a heavy load, but he is up to it.

Money Monster is Occupy Wall Street about three years too late and taken to the extreme.    The best the movie can manage is contrived outrage with an unsympathetic perpetrator representing the screwed-over masses.      This makes me wonder how Donald Trump, a callous billionaire who represents corporate greed and cold excess to the nth degree, is somehow a Presidential candidate whom many people think is a working class hero.     In Network (1976), Howard Beale led a mass movement against the system by proclaiming, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."     Beale would be stunned to see that forty years later, people not only continue to take it, but do so eagerly.     Or maybe he wouldn't be.