The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

Memorable, crazy movie

I'll tell you why so serious

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This is a great movie. No question about it. It has great casting, direction, cinematography and the screenplay is excellent. The people comparing this to a book need to grow up. A movie is never going to be a book, and since it is a movie it is a different version than the book. You have to expect that, it is like two different bands covering the same tune, they are going to perform it differently. This movie is a stand-alone work and should be viewed that way. It has drama, comedy, action and suspense. Reading a book is a waste of time when there is an excellent movie like this. The book Fight Club was weak and without that great movie, you would have never heard of the book. This is no exception, it has a wonderful plot and the Bruce Willis character adds just the right touch to the film.

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

I remember to see this movie in 1991 a year later when come out in theaters and see all the bad reviews and something only to discover that everything that critics says wasn't completely true.With a great great cast,great director,great music so i asked why the hell all the bad reviews? My only complain very little is that the parts of HANKS-WILLIS are change i mean the part of HANKS should be done by WILLIS and vice versa.Besides that the movie are very entertainment and all the characters all in they parts completely so i don't have any complain of this movie.Screw the critics and give this movie a chance...Believe me you won't be disappointment.

From what I can tell all the negative comments about this movie stem from the fact the book is far superior and that the movie doesn't do it justice. I have not read this particular book but I have read many other Tom Wolfe novels and he writes some damn good yarns so it is not surprising the movie isn't as good. It can be hard to translate a good piece of fiction into a comparably good movie.All I can say is that I laughed out loud in a lot of parts and admired the movie for what it is. A very good piece of satire. This movie had all the main elements of a society in decay and shows the true nature of the majority of people. Mankind is ultimately out for themselves and people will do what they can to get ahead no matter who they have to step on to get there even if it means lying and causing grief to innocent people. The amount of pretentious prats in this movie reminds of many people I know. This movie had it down pat when it came to showing the exact nature of politicians. They really don't care. They just want to get re-elected so they can keep their snouts in the public trough.So don't listen to all the nay sayers on here this is a very good movie and will have you entertained for a couple of hours. In reality this movie is a 6.5 to 7.0 but I rated it an 8 to provide some compensation for all the harsh critics on here.