MOVIE REVIEW : ‘80s Greed Falls Flat in ‘Money’

The freshest aspect of “Other People’s Money” (countywide) is the relish in Danny DeVito’s characterization of Wall Street gunslinger Lawrence Garfield--unaffectionately known as “Larry the Liquidator.”

So many movies portray business sharks as unregenerate killjoys that Larry’s pint-size swagger is like a taunt. He really enjoys being a shark, and his zest has an unapologetic, almost slapstick quality. He’s the cartoon embodiment of the greed-is-good ‘80s: a little Caesar who wakes up every morning to the purring of his computer spewing stock quotations.

This being the recession ‘90s, however, Larry’s shenanigans have a different effect than the filmmakers perhaps intended. Directed by Norman Jewison and scripted by Alvin Sargent, the film is based on the 1987 play by former real estate syndicator Jerry Sterner, and it doesn’t invite a contemporary reading. We appear to be observing an extinct species: Larry the Liquidator is as much a product of his era as the hippies were a product of the ‘60s. And yet the filmmakers don’t take an ironic distance from Larry’s finaglings. They present him as a honoree in our national Hall of Shame; he’s a part of our folklore as surely as the robber barons and carpetbaggers.

In the play, Sterner juiced the audience with “insider” business banter; he didn’t take a moralistic attitude toward Larry’s hostile-takeover machinations, which probably explains why the play was a particular favorite of Wall Streeters.

The movie partially defangs the play--starting with the change of Larry’s last name from Garfinkle to Garfield--but the basic plot outline is intact. Larry sees an opportunity to liquidate the 81-year-old, debt-free, Rhode Island-based New England Wire & Cable Co. Opposing him is the company’s intransigent, patriarchal chief executive, “Jorgy” Jorgenson (Gregory Peck), who, at the insistence of his long-time assistant and companion Bea (Piper Laurie), brings into the fray a sexy, high-stakes New York lawyer, Kate Sullivan (Penelope Ann Miller), who happens to be Bea’s daughter.

Whenever DeVito is around, chomping doughnuts and barking orders, the movie mainlines Sterner’s mood of cut-throat burlesque. But Larry is meant to come a cropper when he crosses swords with Kate; she’s supposed to be such a tarty whiz that he ends up liquidating his good sense. Anticipating a quiet dinner for two, he’s like a moony teen-ager primping for the prom.

DeVito is so bullish that, for this duet to work, he needs a full-scale partner; he needs to meet his match, and then some. But Penelope Ann Miller’s Kate is too prim and coquettish, and too unworldly. She’s lovely but bland, and we can’t really see why she sends low-down Larry into a tailspin. Since the film blurs the antagonisms that existed in the play between Kate and her mother and Jorgy, Kate doesn’t have much going for her as a character except gumption, and it’s not enough.

There’s also a moist moralism that seeps into the film around its edges, most particularly in the Hallmark card manner in which the victims of Larry’s machinations are portrayed. Placed beside Larry’s pirate prancings, the goodness of Bea and Jorgy pales. (Dean Jones, cast against type, scores a few points as Jorgy’s duplicitous heir apparent.) If their rectitude had been used as the butt of jokes, the film might have been accused of overweening nastiness, but it also would have been more fun.

“Other People’s Money” (rated R for language) is only “daring” for those people whose ears will be singed listening to lines like Larry’s “You make as much as you can for as long as you can.” Larry’s money love is all there is to this movie because the filmmakers come up with nothing to challenge it--at least nothing that isn’t all misty-eyed and homiletic. The result comes uncomfortably close to a celebration of greed.

Maybe we’re not as far from the ‘80s as we think.

‘Other People’s Money’

Danny DeVito: Lawrence Garfield

Gregory Peck: Andrew (Jorgy) Jorgenson

Piper Laurie: Bea Sullivan

Penelope Ann Miller: Kate Sullivan

A Warner Brothers release of a Yorktown production. Director Norman Jewison. Producer Norman Jewison. Executive producers Ellen Krass, Davina Belling. Screenplay by Alvin Sargent, based on the play by Jerry Sterner. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Editor Lou Lombardo. Costumes Theoni V. Aldredge. Music David Newman. Production design Philip Rosenberg. Art director Robert Guerra, Nathan Haas. Set decorator Tom Roysden. Sound Jeff Wexler. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (for language and sex-related dialogue).