I was moved by the importuning of people I hardly know to leave my (junior) suite for the purpose of filling a room at a screening of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. What convinced me to go was the memory of Michael Douglas' performance in the original, Wall Street: A Fool and his Money Were Lucky Enough to Get Together in the First Place. The original film was a tour de force offering that I have revisited many times over the years. I expected no less from the sequel. What I got was a combination of three films--a chick flick with two very annoying principals, a superficial documentary about the derivative disaster with very obvious things being overstated by some fine actors and, finally, a charismatic turn by Michael Douglas.
Michael's character kept disappearing from the film for half hours at a time and I was left to party with people I never heard of much less cared for. I came to see the continuing saga of Gordon Gekko and was short-changed, which is not so unusual when Hollywood is the cashier. It would be like doing a sequel to Apocalypse Now and setting it in Des Moines (which is not to say that isn't where the action continued). On the other hand, it was great if you'd never seen a movie before.
I avoided the after party and sneaked off to Fouquet's where an honest working man can still get a bite to eat for under a thousand euros.
