The Worst Business Decisions in Movie History  + Movie Review: Dumb Money +  Trailer Park: The Iron Claw

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike. Today, I want to share with you a list of the worst business decisions in movie history. Rolling Stone put together a top fifty list. I came up with a list of my own of terrible business decisions that either lost studios a bunch of money or disappointed fans like you and I. In the movie review, we'll be talking about dumb money and in the trailer park, I'm excited for this one. Our first look at The Iron Claw, starring Zach Efron and Jeremy Allen White as pro wrestling von Eric Brothers. Thank you for being subscribed, Thank you for listening every single week. Shout out to the Monday Morning movie crew. He now let's talk movies.

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Speaker 2: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast.

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Speaker 3: A man with so much movie knowledge. He's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses. From the Nashville Podcast Network, This is movie.

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Speaker 1: Rolling Stone recently put together a list of the fifty worst decisions in movie history. A lot of these are just business decisions, so we're not going to get into actual plot points of movies. These are decisions that either cost studios a bunch of money or left us all scratching our heads wondering why exactly these calls were made when making these movies. I'm not going to go through all fifty. I picked the ones that I thought were the most interesting to share with you, So let's kick this off right now. On their list at number forty nine was Will Smith turns Down the Matrix and Django Unchained. The worst part was he passed on the Matrix in order to make Wild Wild West, which, of course, in hindsight everything is twenty twenty. Will Smith has spoken a lot about why he's turned down the Matrix, and at the time he said he just didn't understand it, which when I look back on both of those, I think him turning down the Matrix is actually less of a worse decision than him turning down Jangle Unchained. Because of where he was in his career at the time nineties going into the two thousands, he was still a very bankable Hollywood star. But if you fast forward to the time Djangle Unchained came out in the twenty tens, I feel like that was the time he should have taken that movie, and the fact that he turned it down probably led him to making a lot of those bombs that he came out with. So surprising to me that he would turn down an opportunity to work with Quentin Tarantino. But I also really couldn't see him doing that role justice the way that Jamie Foxx did, So I'm glad he turned that down, but crazy to me that he was offered both of those roles and said, nah, I'm good at number forty six on their list, they have making a Catwoman movie without Michelle Pfeiffer. As a kid watching this movie, I did not understand what was happening with my body as I saw Michelle Pheiffer as Catwoman, and to me, she is the one and only Catwoman, and that role has never been done justice the way she did it, not with Halle Berry, which that entire casting and entire filmmaking process on that movie was completely awful. But even looking to Anne Hathaway or Zoe Kravitz, no one has brought life to the character like Michelle Pfeiffer did, So if they would have made that movie with her, it would have been a much better movie. The only person I could see doing justice to the Catwoman role now, and maybe it's because she did Harley Quinn so well and plays that devilish villain but kind of sweet role so perfectly would be Margot Robbie. And who knows, maybe now with all that James Gunn is switching up in the DCEU, maybe something like that could happen At number forty five. They have Disney when they stopped making animated movies after the death of Walt and Roy Disney, which I have to say I wasn't completely familiar with this, but apparently after Walt Disney died in nineteen sixty six and his brother Roy died five years after that, Disney sided that animated movies were relics and a thing of the past, so they stopped making them and shifted to making a lot of live action movies. So at this time Disney completely lost their identity because they were banking on the future and they thought it was going to be prettying actors on the screen and staying away from making animated movies. And it wasn't until nineteen eighty nine with The Little Mermaid that they finally started pouring their resources back into animation, and then you get the entire Disney renaissance in the nineties with The Beauty of the Beast, Aladdin, the Lion King, and just realizing like, this is where we need to put all our money because this is what we are the best at. But I wasn't aware that that correlated with the time that Disney and his brother Roy died. Ironic now that they don't really make live action Disney movies unless they're either associated with a ride at disney World or Disneyland, or they're a remake of an animated movie. At number thirty nine on the list, they have making the Hobbit into three movies please, mainly because the source material really only had enough for two movies. Really should have been one movie. But I think this was largely due to the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy being one of the most profitable and also one of the most awarded trilogies of all time. You think, hey, we have a chance to have a similar property, do the exact same thing. Let's split this thing up into three movies, And what you ended up getting was a bunch of people being pretty disappointed in the entire thing. Given the fact that people loved that book, I feel like growing up that was more renowned than anything in the Lord of the Rings book series. Everybody loved the Hobbit, did not like the movies, and number thirty seven was whenever half of Hollywood teamed up to make the disastrous movie forty three. If you're not familiar with this movie, it is a bunch of random comedic scenes. And I'm putting comedic into quotations because if you watch this movie without an open mind, you think that it's pretty terrible. And I'm saying that because I actually have a soft place in my heart for this movie, because I know it's not good. I know it's stupid, I know it's ridiculous. I know on paper it is a bomb, But I remember at the time this movie came out, I found myself really enjoying it. So you have to be into really, really dumb comedy. And by no means do I recommend this movie. I would argue that me enjoying this movie is the equivalent to me enjoying the taste of rat poison. Maybe I just like the taste of rat poison, but I'm not going to encourage you to eat rat poison. So don't go watch this movie and then blame me for saying what a terrible movie. I find it funny. I find some of the scenes actually charming, and there are some quotes from this movie I still say to this day. So I get that it's an awful movie and a blemish in the history of Hollywood, but I don't think it's completely bad worst decision. So just because I have a percentage of bias in my opinion on this, I could see why putting all of these resources and all of these actors into one movie and getting this product and it coming out so terrible being seen as a bad decision. But I'm choosing to ignore that because I kind of like it. At number twenty nine, they have Howard the Duck, which was technically the first ever Marvel movie that came out in nineteen eighty six. George Lucas was a producer on this movie. They had made some smaller scale Marvel movies before this that were made for TV movies with Captain America, the Fantastic Four, you had a couple made for TV Spider Man movies, but this was the first big theatrical release for Marvel and almost single handily destroyed another Marvel movie ever being made. I don't think now that Howard the Duck will ever get his own movie. He does have some random cameos in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, so I think, aside from being an Easter egg now in the MCU, we don't really want or need a Howard the Duck movie. At number twenty eight, they of cats experimenting with digital fur. I agree with this one. I would include every single person who made a decision to put Cats into theaters being one of the worst decisions ever. The casting, the special effects, the soundtrack, everything about this movie was awful. With all the other musical properties you could make a movie out of. Why did they look at cats and think we need to put this on the big screen and we need to get all these Hollywood stars to be in it. Completely awful decision. At number twenty four, they have Mike Myers essentially alienating his entire audience and spitting in their face by making the love Guru, which Mike Myers was on a role in the nineties. In the two thousands, he was still writing The Coattails of All the Austin Powers movies. I would argue that Goldmember was also a bad decision, and before that Cat in the Hat was also a bad decision. So I guess the Love Guru was like a stamp on the end of his career saying, all right, I'm gonna bookend all these good movies with a terrible decision. And number sixteen is just jar Jar Binks, which I feel like this character gets a lot of unwarranted hate, and I think it's because the most hardcore of Star Wars fans just love to hate things. It's one of the most toxic fan bases of all time that they will never be happy. And I say this as someone who loves Star Wars movies. I watched them and I enjoy them, and maybe there's some decisions that it'll completely agree with. But when you talk to a hardcore Star Wars fan, they act like you pede on their grave the way they react to some of these decisions. Jar Jar Binks was not the reason that episode one, two, and three weren't well received. I think he was just the mascot, the symbol that could represent an entire fan basis hate. Because then in the twenty tens, we had a similar reaction from the Star Wars fan base whenever they made the trailog with Daisy Ridley. So Star Wars fans are always going to find something to hate. Justice for jar Jar binks at number fifteen. This one is dark. MGM gets teenage Julie Garland hooked on drugs so that she could do The Wizard of Oz with eighteen hour shooting days, and then on top of that, they gave her downers to sleep and amphetamines to wake her up. She became an addict and died at the age of forty seven. When you look at the dark history of The Wizard of Oz, it really eclipses all that that movie means in cinematic history. Yes, it's a great, big movie. It was important at the time, But when you think of all the people who were hurt, the lives that were ruined, the people who suffered all these medical problems as a result to the awful working conditions, this movie should not have been made and it really shouldn't be as popular as it is now. And as much as I enjoyed the movie as a kid, and even now going back and watching it as an adult, I just can't help but feel bad for all the actors and everybody who is a part of this movie. But it's just one of those movies that is going to live on forever. But man, that is a dark one. At number fourteen, the list has Columbia Pictures, passing on ET Back to the Future and pulp Fiction. And I know right now we're getting through the actors strike came out last week that they have not reached a decision yet. The writers are back, but the actors are not. And the point I'm trying to make here is, if you look at the decisions made by CEOs and studio heads passing on movies like ET Back to the Future and pulp fiction, why not replace those people with AI. I feel like AI would have more power in making decisions like this. So what script should we actually turn into a movie? The financial decisions and repercussions and all of these factors you could put in with actors and directors. If you put those together, will this be successful? Put that into AI and eliminate it from the idea of using it in the creative process. We don't need AI to write scripts or to put people in the background by using their likeness. Why not just AI? The executives, and then we'll all be happier here the people who are the reason that these people can't get paid and can't get health insurance. AI those people and give the creatives all the money. That's how I feel, because look at that. They passed on three of the biggest movies of all time, and number ten I just found hilarious. I wasn't that familiar with it, but apparently the movie Roar used real untrained lions, and pretty much every member of the cast and crew got attacked at some point, including twenty something Melanie Griffith, who was almost scalped and needed fifty stitches. So the movie has all these lions running around. That is just insane to me that you would use a real lion. Working with animals is already dangerous enough as it is, whether it be a monkey or even a dog, but a lion. A frickin line who made that decision at number eight? I love this one. Going back to my thought on executives should be the ones being replaced with AI. Warner Brothers lost Home Alone over a measly three million dollars, so I actually watched the entire movies that made us episode on Home Alone, which I highly recommend if you haven't checked that out. But essentially, Christopher Columbus, who directed the movie, needed seventeen million dollars to finish the movie seventeen million dollars and Warner Brothers told him they couldn't go higher than fourteen million, and in order for him to make this movie he needed the seventeen million. They didn't want to pay it, so instead he figured away how to get out of the deal with Warner Brothers and take the movie to twentieth Century Fox, who gave him the money he needed. And crazy to me that the entire budget of Home Alone in total was only eighteen million dollars and it went on to gross over five hundred million dollars at the box office and continues to raking money every single year because it is a Christmas classic. Bad move there at number five, they have Matt Damon turning down Avatar and the deal included ten percent on the back end, which means he would have made two hundred and fifty million dollars on the deal. Let me say that again, he turned down Avatar and he would have made two hundred and fifty million dollars. And I've seen Matt Damon talk about this, and you can see the pain in his eyes because not only would he have made all that money, which is nicey, I'm sure he's doing it all right, but he would have been a part one of the highest grossing movies of all time and a part of a franchise that is going to continue making movies and continue generating revenue. To have ten percent is amazing, so that one has to hurt. Also on their list they have Blockbuster turning down the offer to buy Netflix for fifty million dollars in two thousand. That is a rough one, and I really think the big decision there was a lot of the money that Blockbuster made was on late fees, and Netflix's business model at the time did incorporate late fees, so they thought, ah, that will never catch on, and also, we're not gonna be able to make a whole lot of money off of this, And just years later Blockbuster went down and now Netflix is king. But even Netflix now, they just shipped out their final DVDs just this year, and I remember that was a way that I watched so many movies. I would watch one, ship it back as soon as I could to get another one. I would try to get in three movies in a week in my heyday of getting DVDs in the mail from Netflix, but now that is gone, and now Blockbuster is gone. I will say I'm kind of having this resurgence of enjoying physical media, and I think it will make a comeback at some point, because there is something about going into a store and actually like flipping through things and seeing things you want to watch. The only thing that keeps me from really doing that is I don't really has space to put it all. But I feel like someday it'll kind of have a resurgence because if we see what happened with music of vinyl being cool now people liking to collect things, I don't think DVD's will really be that, but I feel we're starting to see it now with VHS's. And I also feel like there is the level of a feeling to watching a movie on VHS. There's kind of a warmth to it, there's kind of a fuzz on it, so kind of the same way it feels while listening to an album on a record. Maybe there's some kind of demand there of people wanting to watch movies again like we did in the eighties and nineties. And the final one I'll go through on the Rolling Stone list is Burt Reynolds turning down the roles of James Bond, also turning down The Godfather, Star Wars, Pretty Woman, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. That was an epic run of bad decisions. So that is some of the ones I picked from the Rolling Stone list. Now I have some of my own, and no real order. What's so ever, just the fact that these decisions I feel are terrible and get my blood boiling. But first off, I'll say Warner Brothers canceling Batgirl. This one was fairly recent. The movie was completely done, ready to be put out on HBO Max. I really think this movie should have even had a theatrical release. And if you look at the movies that DC decided to put out this year, with Shazam, with The Flash, with the Akaman sequel coming out in December. I know you're gonna say, what about Blue Beetle. I love blue Beetles, so I wouldn't include that one on this list, but I would trade in all three of those to be able to watch Backgirl. I think that is a horrible decision, and I hope that someday this movie sees the light of day, maybe somebody leaks it, and maybe they come to their senses and finally put it out. I think they will make like a special Blu Ray collector's edition or something. We need to see this movie. Also on my list, I have casting Toefer Grace as Venom and spa Spider Man three. I think that Sam Raimi had an entirely different vision going into Spider Man three. I think initially he only wanted Sandman and Harry Osborne to be the villains in Spider Man three, but then Venom got forced in there. He didn't really want him in this movie, didn't really fit in this movie. He was really just crammed in the third act, and the entire Eddy Brocks storyline in that movie could have not existed. And I am somebody who loves Venom. Growing up, he was always my favorite villain. He just looks the best, he sounds the best, his backstory is great, and now he is only my second favorite villain because of Thanos. But I remember being so underwhelmed at seeing Tofriend Grace portray Venom. The entire decision on the look of the character in that movie was completely terrible, and for somebody who loves Venom as much as I do, nothing has done of justice the way he is so epic in the comic books, but also in the animated Spider Man show from the nineties, not to for Grace, I would say Tom Hardy is a better Eddie Brock, but I still don't love to look a Venom in those movies, so I would say Venom as a whole has been a bad decision in Hollywood. Also on my list was not leaving Toy Story as a trilogy. Should have been Toy Story one, Toy Story two, Toy Story three, and a franchise. We didn't need a four, and now they're gonna make a five, probably gonna make a six. What they should have done was kind of what they tried to do with light Year, of just make spinoff movies. I know a lot of people had issues with that movie. I still thought it was great. I think the idea of creating this Toy Story universe where each film is a different character but done in a different style. Light Year was the sci fi style. Maybe you make a horror movie, maybe you make a buddy comedy. There are all these other storylines you can explore instead of just making more and more toy stories, which doesn't really feel as cohesive. And Toy Story three was such a great ending on the true that it kind of tarnishes the entire franchise, so they should have left that movie a trilogy. Also on my list, I have hiring Tim Burton to direct Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. It was one of my favorite movies growing up. I love Willy Wonka, and that one completely ruined it for me. The tone was off, the casting was awful. Johnny Depp being cast as Willy Wonka is one of the worst casting decisions ever made, and that entire movie is so unwatchable for me because of Tim Burton's style, which I liked it and Batman returns, but when it comes to Willy Wonka just didn't do it for me. Also on my list, I had Whenever Franchises decide to turn the final movie into two parts. What I'm explaining here is whenever Harry Potter splits the last movie into part one and part two. Twilight did the same thing. Hunger Games did the same thing. It screams cash grab to me, and I get what they're doing. They are trying to spread out the source material, and these movies were incredibly popular. They were doing amazing numbers and there was a demand for more of them. But then they get to the end of the source material and realize, oh, man, we got to squeeze out some more money out of this. I know, we split the last book up into two parts. What you end up getting is a very incomplete movie. And I remember at the end of Hunger Games, in particular part one, I felt robbed. I hated waiting for the next part. They should have just made those movies one movie instead of splitting it out, and instead of getting more money out of our pockets. I'm glad that they have really moved away from this process. There also hasn't been as successful as a book turn movie franchise in a while that they haven't had the opportunity to do this, But I hope they don't do it ever again. Next up on my list, I have Rushing the Justice League. In twenty seventeen. I heard people who were working on this movie working in the DCEU come out this year and said, yeah, they told us we needed to keep up with Marvel, we needed to create our own MCU, and that is exactly what they were doing, trying to do exactly what Marvel was doing with the Avengers and wanted their own. But what ended up happening is they fumbled because they rushed the solo movies. We didn't really get to know the characters like we did with Marvel, and then they just threw them all together and nobody really had any on screen chemistry, and what they were really lacking was their own Kevin fig who is the president of Marvel. He is the one who has the overarching vision for all of these movies and the one making sure that it feels like a cohesive, functioning, entire operation where they all fit together. You just really had chaos over on the DC side because there wasn't somebody who had that vision. We do have that now with James Gunn, so maybe we'll see a little bit of a change there. But rushing that Justice League movie was a terrible decision. The final one I'll mention here as being one of the worst decision in movie history. The marketing behind the Cable Guy. If you think of Jim Carrey's career in the nineties, he was on this incredible unheard of trajectory as being one of the most sought out comedic actors of the nineties, making an incredible, a stupid amount of money to be in a movie, and he'd been in movies like The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venta, And they completely fumbled the marketing on The Cable Guy, which is actually a good movie, but in the marketing it was portrayed as, hey, look, Jim Carrey is in another comedy. You know, the wacky guy who talks with his butt. Now he's the Cable Guy. And when we all went to go see this movie or watch it on VHS, which the first time I watched this was I think the first ever experience I had at a video rental store. It was The Cable Guy. We rented The Cable Guy, and we rented Child's Play, and then we rented a VHS of episodes of ThunderCats, and that was a great Friday night in movie history for me. But the movie is actually pretty good and I enjoy it now. I love the dynamic between Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick. But it was marketed as a comedy and it's a dark comedy with kind of a twisted edge to it, which is actually a really good, interesting story, but it wasn't what audiences were promised. We were promised Jim Carrey, and we got a much different side of Jim Carrey. And a lot of people said this movie almost killed his career for that reason, and it's all because of the marketing. But I think when you look at the history of Jim Carrey's movies, he always wanted to do darker roles. We just weren't ready for it yet because we didn't know it was coming. Later in the nineties with movies like Man on the Moon and The Truman Show, we finally got it, and by the time we got to Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, we were like, oh, yes, Jim Carrey also makes comedies and he also makes really great dramatic movies. So just the fact that the marketing almost killed Jim Carrey's career was a terrible decision. So that is my list, combined with the list from Rolling Stone. We'll come back, I'll give you my review of Dumb Money, and then we'll get into the trailer park, where we'll talk about how ripped zach Efron is. In the trailer for the Ironcloth, gonna get into a spoiler free movie review, joined now by my co host and wife Kelsey. How are you.

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Speaker 4: I'm great and holding the emotional support stage.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah. If you're watching on YouTube, you can check out the entire new studio space, which we spend a lot of time getting together, finding a lot of things to make this set look a little bit more lively. So if you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel and you're just listening to the podcast, check it out YouTube dot com slash Mike Adistro. All right, let's get into the movie Dumb Money, which after watching this movie, it made me realize how little I know about Wall Street. I know nothing about it aside from what I've learned movies, whether it be The Wolf of Wall Street, the Big Short, or the other movie just watched on Netflix, fair Play.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a wild side of wall Street.

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Speaker 1: And now we have Dumb which just came out in theaters and it was one that kind of slipped through the cracks of September. We just went to go see it and it's essentially the true story of the game stop short Squeeze, which was another term I had no idea until we watched this movie, but essentially what happened. You have this one guy played by Paul Dano or Dano I think is how you say his name. One of my favorite actors actually, but he plays a character named Roaring Kitty, who is a real life person, has a normal job, but he's also a recreational YouTuber who was a part of the subreddit called Wall Street bets. If you're not familiar with Reddit and the way it works, essentially, it's one site and there are all these other message boards inside the site on very specific niche top ryn.

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Speaker 4: You could find a Reddit page just about anything.

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Speaker 1: You could find it about Wall Street, you could find it about Pokemon, you could find it about gardening, anything you're into. There is an entire community inside of Reddit somewhere.

00:26:54
Speaker 4: Any of those you've been visiting.

00:26:55
Speaker 1: The Pokemon, just the Pokemon, a little bit of gardening, a little bit of gardener. But Wall Street, you would have people go on there and just post about things they were investing on. When it comes to the Robinhood app, which is another thing I learned a lot about. I've seen other people use it, but it just I don't know when it comes to investing in things, I realize I know so little about it that it would feel like a waste of money to me.

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Speaker 5: Another thing we should add is that roring Kitty, the guy is like day to day job is a trader, so he has knowledge of the stock market. He's like a day to day retail trader.

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Speaker 1: And he's a very smart guy, so spend a lot of his time outside of his job just learning about it. Again, since this is a movie based on a real story, I don't want to spoil things that happen and use the trope of oh, it happened in real life, because I feel like when you watch a movie based on a true story, you don't know the full story going into it, and you learn a lot about it. So I don't want to reveal every single entire plot point of this movie, even though yes, if you google it you can figure it out, because I think the enjoyment of this movie is learning as you go. And I also judge movies based on true stories a little bit differently because sometimes just because you know it's a real story, it changes the way you feel about a movie because you know all this actually happened in real life. Therefore I find it more interesting. I watched this movie with the idea that I wanted to be entertaining on its own. If this story was fake and didn't really happen, would it still be entertaining or is it only entertaining because it actually happened. I think in the case of Dull Money, it is just an entertaining movie.

00:28:27
Speaker 4: It really is.

00:28:28
Speaker 1: The story itself and all the characters that all had something to do with this entire situation is an entertaining story that even if this entire thing was completely made up just for the sake of this film, it would be enjoyable.

00:28:41
Speaker 4: But it's even more wild that it's not me.

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Speaker 1: Oh, it's so wild. So essentially, what Rooring Kitty does is he just goes on a live stream one day on YouTube and just talks about how he thinks the game stop stock is interesting and then undervalued. And then it shows his spreadsheets of his portfolio, which is the most polarizing about his character and shows that he himself has invested fifty thousand dollars of his own money into gamestock tire savings account, which at the time that this movie takes place. At the beginning of the movie is twenty twenty, when everything's shut down, and GameStop was seen as a failing company because people weren't really going inside a store in buying games. So his character goes on this live stream, talks about it, and then gets other people interested in the game Stop stock who also put their own money into it. But at this same time, there are all these people on Wall Street who are betting against the success of game Stop, which would make them earn a lot of money when GameStop goes under. So GameStop would go under and they would make millions upon billions of dollars as a result of that.

00:29:46
Speaker 4: Took a real jump there, millions upon billions.

00:29:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of forgot how much it was because all the dudes in this movie are worth billions of dollars, so they were going to make a lot of money off of it. And then once all these people start getting on robin Hood and buying the game Stop stop, the rich people's plan turns on them, because again I know nothing about this.

00:30:06
Speaker 4: This demand is driving the price of the stock.

00:30:09
Speaker 1: So now the people who are seen as quote unquote dumb money, who were just the people on robin Hood, are now set to make a lot of money off game stop and all their small investments turned into big investments, And the rest of the movie is all of the downfall and all of the crazy things that happened as a result of this thing, going from just one little operation of a dude in his basement doing a video on YouTube to this entire thing where the government gets involved and it turns pretty nuts.

00:30:38
Speaker 5: And it's also not just about his character. It's like the other people that he has convinced. There's a single mom who's a nurse. They're super era college students, which I don't talk about this for a second.

00:30:49
Speaker 4: They went to ut Austin.

00:30:51
Speaker 5: That was not filmed on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin one bit.

00:30:58
Speaker 1: And how would you know that because I went.

00:30:59
Speaker 5: There exactly and I worked there, and I was on that campus for seven years of my life. And I would pay good money to say that was probably filmed in like New England. At one point, they're riding around and like the leaves are turning on campus and like no part of campus looks like that. They're dorm rooms, no part of campus looks like that. The classroom.

00:31:19
Speaker 4: So anyways, that is my bone to pick with the money.

00:31:20
Speaker 1: They do that a lot to save money on not filming in certain locations because it's expensive.

00:31:24
Speaker 4: To film there, but like at least make it longing.

00:31:27
Speaker 1: But aside from that, I feel like this movie had such a great cast with Paul Dano, even Pete Davidson, who plays himself in essentially every single role that he is in. Okay, just just in and that's all Pete Davidson does, but in this when I felt like it really fit in because he plays Paul Daniel's brother. And then you have, like we mentioned earlier, America Ferrera.

00:31:49
Speaker 5: You have Shalane Woodley, who is great in this I loved her in this role.

00:31:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I think like this is the kind of role she should take on more of, just like a normal person found her very likable in this role, as did I. And then you also have Seth Rogan who plays one of the rich guys you don't like in this movie.

00:32:07
Speaker 5: Even have Nick Offerman, yeah, who Ron Swanson.

00:32:11
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing about all these characters and the fact that this movie takes place in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, is they are all in separate locations because we were all separated during that time in the real world. So I felt like the dynamic of this movie was pretty interesting that a lot and most of the main characters are never on screen together. Despite that being the fact of them not having like face to face interactions, I felt like the chemistry between all the characters was actually really good and all of the dynamics of it going from one location to another location really worked throughout the entire movie. Later down the line, when we look back on this movie, I feel like it will be a good representation of what life was like in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. But I think the main message of this movie is kind of gets you angry Abount Wall Street of how some of their practices are so shady and really how much power really rich people have and I don't even say rich people, but really wealthy people who have a stupid amount of money.

00:33:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is one of their net worths was like twelve billion dollars.

00:33:15
Speaker 1: Like an insane amount of money, And how those people get bailed out in situations and people at the bottom, like you and I, we don't get bailouts. We don't have people like oh, if you mess up, we'll get you out of this situation. So it kind of got me fired up in a way and angry at the system. And I really feel like this movie kind of sparked something in me that I didn't really expect. And also the fact that I feel like Shanleen Woodley and Paul Dano's character kind of resembled us in a way. I saw a lot of our relationship and their relationship in this movie. Did you see that?

00:33:50
Speaker 4: Yeah? I was like, would I trust you to invest fifty.

00:33:53
Speaker 5: Thousand dollars in games some stock because if you lose that? They were like, that's our entire savings. But she believe him. But he also he had his crap together.

00:34:03
Speaker 1: And I think just his character even when he goes down to the basement in like films of video, it reminded me of when I sit down to do this podcast here, I get the webcam ready and I essentially become a movie my character, even though really it's how I am in real life. But there were other elements of his character, like he enjoyed running and he liked getting a really fast mile time. I identified with that part of his character that was you. And he's also super into Reddit, which I was more into Reddit when I was younger. Now, I don't really get on there anymore because it's a pretty sad and depressing place for the first part. The movie also shows that as well of how crazy the comments are over on Reddit. I wasn't expecting to like this movie as much as I did because I thought it was going to be more a straight on comedy, which given their marketing, given the trailer, also just given the cast, I thought that's what they were going for. But this movie had a lot more emotional depth than I was expecting. It had heart, So since it's already nearing it's the theatrical run, I wouldn't even say if we had seen it back when it came out initially that it was one you had to see in theaters. But once this movie goes to streaming, whether it be you have to rent it or have to stream it on a service, I highly recommend checking out Dumb Money. What do you think?

00:35:16
Speaker 4: I completely agree?

00:35:18
Speaker 1: What would you rate it?

00:35:18
Speaker 4: I'm going to give it a four point twenty five. I'm deducting that point seventy five due to the bias of it just did not look like ut Austin. It's my deduction.

00:35:27
Speaker 1: I would give it a strong four out of five video game cartridges. Those are our thoughts on dumb money.

00:35:34
Speaker 5: And next week I'll be back to talk about the book of Killers of the Flower Moon.

00:35:38
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, review the movie.

00:35:40
Speaker 5: I did my homework for all of you as the resident book nerd of this podcast.

00:35:44
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to read the book in actuality?

00:35:46
Speaker 4: A couple of days.

00:35:47
Speaker 5: I started it like a month ago, though, and then got distracted by another book, so I put it down. But then once I picked it back up, it's a slow start, and then it's divided into three parts. Once you get halfway through part one, you can't put it down.

00:35:58
Speaker 1: So the movie is three and a half hours long. You're gonna have a pretty big investment in this story at the end of it.

00:36:04
Speaker 5: So long, Yeah, you get invested. But me and my book light, we're just reading away this week.

00:36:09
Speaker 1: So look forward to our Killers of the Flower Moon review next week. It's time to head down to movie.

00:36:19
Speaker 2: Mike Traylor Paul.

00:36:21
Speaker 1: As a kid, I was a huge wrestling fan back when it was the WWF before it turned into the WWE. I would watch it every single Monday and Thursday night. I would say for me, because I grew up around it. That was the best time for wrestling in the nineties, the Attitude era, the Rock Triple Age, Undertaker, all of those classic wrestlers to me, So I have a soft spot for this movie coming out from A twenty four called The Iron Claw, which is about the Von Eirik Brothers, who I am pretty unfamiliar with, and I am someone who spent a lot of time understanding the history of wrestling, but now I'm excited to learn a lot about their story, which people say is an interesting story, but a very sad story. So in this movie, The Iron Claw, coming out on December twenty second, you have Zach Effron and Jeremy Allen White, who play the pro wrestling brothers, the Von Eric Brothers, coming to us from A twenty four, which is one of my favorite movie studios, And quite honestly, this is a much different type of film that I expect from them. They don't really do a whole lot of biopics, don't really do a whole lot of movies based on actual people, so I'm very excited to see the treatment they give this story. But before I get into more of my thoughts about The Iron Claw, here's just a little bit of the trailer.

00:37:44
Speaker 6: Ever since I was a child, people said my family was cursed. Now I'm tried to protect us with God, tried to protect us with wrestling. He said, if we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing had ever heard us.

00:37:56
Speaker 1: I believed him. We all did.

00:37:57
Speaker 4: What Now we all don't.

00:38:00
Speaker 1: He's my favorite than keV, then David, than Mike, but the rankings can always change. There's so many one of the.

00:38:08
Speaker 6: I don't want to be with my family, You'll be with my brothers.

00:38:13
Speaker 1: What do you like to do with your brothers? So Zach Efron plays Kevin Vaughan Eric, the oldest son from this generation of the family, have Jeremy Allen y aka Karmei on the bear playing his brother. There are four brothers in total, with their dad and their mom, and just by watching this trailer, it gives me a little bit of a glimpse into the dark story of their family. Just hearing their dad rank his favorite kids, that tells you a lot about his character. And I do enjoy movies where you discover why people are the way they are, especially when it comes to people who go on to do great things like the von Eric brothers and be one of the most iconic families in all of wrestling. You realize that a lot of that probably comes from pain, and there is no greater pain than having a strenuous relationship with your father. So I think this movie is highly going to dive into that, and I love both of the actors together in the lead roles. Zach Effron, I feel, gets pigeonholed into these roles that we kind of expect him in, and maybe that's his own fault because of the roles he takes where he always just gets ripped up and takes his shirt off. He did in Baywatch, but I feel it's way more warranted in this one, and it looks like he got into incredible shape for this movie. And then you have Jeremy Allen White, who you would know as Carme You from The Bear, who has become one of my favorite new actors because of the work he does in that show. But I'm really excited to see that translate onto the big screen in him getting more lead roles in films. He also looks pretty shreded himself, and from what I've seen from his character and his work on The Bear, he is really good at being part of a dysfunctional family. What I'm excited to see is how this movie will take on the hardships of wrestling, because whenever you talk to somebody about wrestling, they always have the same critique, how can you watch that stuff? It's fake? And yes, maybe in most cases, or really in every case, the results of the matches are predetermined, especially when it comes to the WWE. The big part of it is all the drama. It's like a soap opera with fighting in the middle of it. But what is not fake about wrestling is the tolls it takes on these wrestlers' lives, the tolls it takes on their body, their mental health, and being on the road for as many days out of the year as they are is not an easy feat. So I can only imagine how harder it was back in the sixties when this story takes place. So again, I'm not too familiar with the story of the Eric brothers and the von Eeric family, but I'm really excited to learn about it and kind of preparing myself mentally of what everybody is saying about the hardships they have gone through. In the trailer, we see that it's gonna deal with death, and it's also gonna deal with their dad pushing them a little bit too hard. I don't know if one is going to lead to the other, but I'm already getting my tissues and my sweat towel ready for the action in this movie. Again, The Iron Claw is coming out on December twenty second, twenty twenty three. If I had to rate my excitement level for this movie, let's see, I am at a four out of five. I think I would be out of five if I was more familiar with their story. But I'm going into this one as a wrestling fan wanting to see a really raw and honest depiction of what it's really like. I think also because it is an a twenty four film and you have two really great leads in this movie, I feel like this movie is gonna be a choke slam and I will see you all in the ring in December.

00:41:46
Speaker 4: At That was this week's edition of Movie Line Tramer.

00:41:50
Speaker 1: Bar and That's gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week and upget you on the winner of last week's contest, where Kelsey challenged me to put my money where my mouth is and give away a rental of Bottoms because I came on here and said it is one of the best comedies of the last five years and more people need to see this movie. So I challenge everybody who listened to last week's episode to go and comment on my latest reel with the popcorn emoji, I took all the usernames of everybody who entered, threw it in a random online picker, and let the random picker choose the winner. And the winner of the contest and this week's listener shout out of the Week is Crystal Cook. I got her all hooked up so she can have a movie night and watch Bottoms, and I'll have to get her review as well. So thank you Crystal for entering, and congrats for being the winner. And this week's listener shout out of the week. Thank you to everybody else who entered in that contest. Maybe we'll do another one down the road when I find another really great movie that I think everybody needs to see. So thank you for being subscribed, thank you for listening every single week, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later,