The casting is all wrong, the nuances all missed

AlsExGal

It's been a long time since I read the book or saw the movie, but the casting in this film was all wrong. I saw the trailer on TV, saw the disaster the film might be, but I went to see it anyways and I was very disappointed. Tom Hanks, even before Philadelphia or Forrest Gump or Sleepless in Seattle, played the likable every-man. Hanks' character, Sherman McCoy, is a wall street tycoon, aged 38, with a wife two years older, a daughter he adores, and a young mistress that he insists he deserves all because he is a "master of the universe". In the book, Judy McCoy, Sherman's wife, is described as handsome but matronly at aged 40. Sherman remembers his mother telling him a wife two years older would not make a difference when he was 24 and she was 26, but 20 years later it would, and actually it took only ten years.

But then one night when he is with his mistress, Sherman takes a wrong turn off the freeway into the South Bronx and ends up hitting a black youth with his car because he perceives his life is in danger, and decides to not report the accident to police, to "hit and run". However, he is tracked down and arrested and soon realizes he is not the master of anything compared to the grifters, community leaders, ambulance chasers, and prosecutors who finally have a completely unlikable rich white perp and a poor black victim.

The novel was wonderful and nuanced. The movie is obvious and almost farcical. Hanks is too likable to play any of the characters in this film, I had Bruce Willis pictured as Sherman McCoy more than the drunken yellow journalist, and Kim Cattrell, who plays Sherman's wife, doesn't look like the matronly 40 year old and barely tolerated wife of anybody in 1990. Only Morgan Freeman as the judge rings remotely true. I'd pass on this one if I were you, but for sure read the book. After the 2008 crash and the banksters walking away without a scratch, Sherman McCoy seems more real than ever.

score 4/10

AlsExGal 19 November 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3583002/