Powerful

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Just as Network can be watched to gain an education about television politics, and Wall Street can be watched to learn about, well, greed, Other People's Money is just as educational as it is entertaining. And since it's highly entertaining, that's saying a lot! Danny DeVito plays a slimy scumbag who makes business deals and often destroys companies. His next target: Gregory Peck's and Piper Laurie's struggling company. If you don't know what a corporate takeover is, the movie will teach you. As the old-world and new-world views clash, the old-timers pull out a secret weapon: their daughter. Penelope Ann Miller, while clad in some beautiful outfits, sasses and teases Danny DeVito as he tries to ruin her parents, hoping that the sexual tension will cause him to weaken or falter. I don't happen to find her very attractive, but Alvin Sargent's screenplay, based on Jerry Sterner's play, has given her some very good lines! Yes, no one likes to see a corporate goon pick on poor ol' Gregory Peck, but it's actually a really enjoyable movie. And, amazingly enough, besides the heavy subject matter, the movie is a comedy! For some great one-liners, some steamy romantic banter, and an economics lesson, you can't go wrong by watching Other People's Money.

Larry the liquidator buys up businesses and sells their assets. He has his eyes on a wire and cable company. He meets with Jorgensen, the company President and tells him his plan to challenge him for control at the next stockholder's meeting. So Jorgensen asks his step daughter, Kate, a lawyer to help. She meets with Larry, and he is smitten with her, but he still sets out on his plan and a battle to see who can get the most shares, ensues.....Its a film about Yuppies, for Yuppies, with a little bit of romance thrown in.What should have been a biting satire about old school not wanting to part with something, even though its potentially failing, ends up wanting to be a screwball-esque forties comedy, with a little bit of Wall Street thrown in.And while it's an entertaining enough movie, it's not topical enough, and its politics are severely dated. And thanks to the failure of Bonfire Of The Vanities, it's not surprising the film vanished without a trace.Plus, the way the female characters, apart from Miller, are depicted and spoken to, is a little too misogynistic.But Devito is at the top of his game here, showing a more human side in his character like he never has before. Peck predictability steals the film, and before you can say 'Greed is Good', it's all over and we get a sort of happy ending.Now time for a Donut.

Based on Jerry Sterner's stage play of the same name, Other People's Money, rewritten for the screen by Alvin Sargent and directed by veteran Norman Jewison, delivers an entertaining treatise on the practice of hostile corporate takeovers and the tug-of-war between stockholder interests and employee welfare. Danny DeVito plays Lawrence Garfield (a.k.a., Larry the Liquidator), a notorious Wall Street corporate raider, whose most recent target is a New England manufacturer of wire and cable. On the side of the employees' interests is Andrew Jorgensen, the company's leader, splendidly played by Gregory Peck, and his stepdaughter Kate Sullivan (Penelope Ann Miller), whom he hires as his attorney to defend the company against liquidation. Miller is slightly miscast as the seductive, hard-ball playing, small-town-girl-turned-cosmopolitan, but, then again, so is DeVito. He's a tad too likable out of the gate; she's a trifle skewed to the simpler, softer side of the character. Both of them rise to the occasion with such talent and verve that they make their respective roles come off as the ones they were born to play. These are meaty parts, and these two actors have never been better. And you may not predict it, but their on screen chemistry is quite palpable. Jewison shows a nicely developed eye and ear for scene variety and continuity. The writers show a comparable aptitude for scene-to-scene rhythm, balance, and semantic connectivity and contrast. One case of juxtaposition particularly demonstrates this aptitude, while simultaneously punctuating the spectrum of loyalties that spans the film's central conflict. Jorgensen's right-hand man, Bill Coles (Dean Jones), who feels he is owed a "golden parachute" for his years of hard work and dedication, approaches Larry in secret and offers him the right to vote his shares in exchange for a million dollars. Coles has defected to Garfield's side, but he feels guilty about it. "Everybody looks out for their own self-interest," he says to Garfield, looking for some kind of moral reassurance. None is forthcoming. Garfield has already come to that conclusion: survival of the fittest; he is pure capitalism. Shortly after this scene, Jorgensen's wife and Kate's mother, Bea (Piper Laurie), secretly meets with Larry and offers him a million dollars to call off his fight. Garfield can't believe it. She hopes to appeal to his sense of decency. "I don't take money from widows or orphans," Garfield explains. "I make them money." All of this leads to a "proxy bloodbath" in which Larry and Jorgy, in beautifully written and brilliantly delivered speeches, summarize each side of the argument with clarity of position and passionate conviction. David Newman's score is a touch too whimsical for the material, but it fits in with the overly tidy, "happy" Hollywood ending. Then again, the resolution isn't impossible. Larry makes it clear that he doesn't care whether they make wire and cable or airbags, or whether they lose their jobs or keep them, as long as he makes money. And he does, even if it's other people's money.

This movie is great entertainment that delivers a message without being preachy. And a measure of how successful it is: it makes you believe that Danny de Vito and Penelope Ann Miller actually could be a great, sexy couple! It is very much a movie of its time: the late 80's, early 90's, when corporate "raiders" and hostile takeovers of firms were in the news. Stock traders made fortunes and corporations were laying off thousands of people at a time as CEO's sought to raise the price of their stock, and it didn't matter what a company was making-- or not making-- as long as the price of the stock stayed up.So, in this environment of "greed is good" and Wall Street being the tail that wagged the dog of American productivity, we have this movie, which pits the good guy, Andrew "Jorgie" Jorgensen (played by the archetypal good guy actor, Gregory Peck), against the bad guy, corporate raider Lawrence Garfield (played by Danny de Vito).Jorgie is the majority stockholder and CEO of New England Wire & Cable Company, a firm that is a creation of his family and whose interests and employees he regards as a responsibility of his family. As played by Peck, Jorgie is the acme of decency and old-fashioned conservative values: hard work and thrift, expecting loyalty from his employees and demonstrating loyalty in return. Stubborn and resistant to change where he sees change as conflicting with his values. An upright, honest, virtuous man who believes that moral rightness will always be recognized and will always triumph.Danny de Vito is his nemesis: a corporate raider who rose from hardscrabble beginnings in the Bronx to a posh Manhattan office and mansion, whose expertise is in finding stocks that are undervalued and making a profit through manipulating the market. He is unabashed about what he does: he loves "the game," as he calls it, and plays it with the fighting spirit of a junk-yard pitbull. There's no malice in what he does, no hard feelings, but also no apology for the carnage he leaves in his wake. He's just doing what he's best at doing.And so de Vito identifies New England Wire & Cable as a prime target for takeover: the company is worth far more than the value of its stock. That's all de Vito needs to know, and the fight is on.The interest comes when Jorgie brings his step-daughter in to advise on how to fend off de Vito. Penelope Ann Miller plays Kate Sullivan, a young hot-shot lawyer in a Manhattan legal firm. She's a HOT hot-shot, no doubt about it, and much of the movie centers on her interactions with de Vito.The thing de Vito brings to his role is great energy and joy. This is a character that could be played as dark, as evil, as someone to be reviled, but there is a genuine likability to de Vito even as you see that what he's doing causes a lot of people a lot of harm, and that he's not above doing unethical things if he thinks he can get away with them. But for all that he's definitely not a "good guy," he's someone you can't really dislike. He's a rogue, but he's a rogue completely without malice. Just like a tiger will tear the throat out of its prey and is a dangerous predator, but is still a beast with qualities that make you admire it-- from a distance, or with the bars of a cage to protect you.The movie's final battle, the scene where Peck and de Vito make speeches to the company stockholders in support of what they represent, is an amazingly articulate piece of writing that is as superbly acted as anything you're going to see in the movies. IMO that one scene alone makes the movie worthwhile. That there's so much more to like about this movie really makes it a winner.Dean Jones has a role in the movie that I think is one of the best of his career. I don't think he got the respect in his career that he deserved; he did a lot of work in Disney films, and I think this caused people to take his talents as an actor lighter than they should. He's excellent in his role here.And Penelope Ann Miller-- she is absolute dynamite in this role, she's really the backbone of the action. Her interactions with de Vito are warm and believable and the chemistry between the two of them WORKS.There are some flaws to the movie: the biggest is that there is apparently some back-story, some conflict between the Jorgie character and Miller's character, that isn't made clear. She's Jorgie's step-daughter and it's apparent that at some time in their lives, there was a conflict, and that there is a reserve between them. But it's never made clear what the issue was, and to this extent the movie isn't satisfying.Piper Laurie's character, Jorgie's wife, is also perhaps not fully realized. She's good, but there's something missing, something I can't really describe.But those are small quibbles. Over all, this is a superb movie that I think is one of de Vito's best roles, and is a funny, thoughtful, well-written story that characterizes a particular time and issue that were defining to America.