Review of The Bonfire of the Vanities

What the heck was wrong with The Bonfire of the Vanities? To start with, everything about this flick doesn't feel right from the beginning to the casting of Tom Hanks as an unlikable Wall Street tycoon, as well as Bruce Willis as a journalist who was supposed to be British, plus the torturous production on how everything got made. Published by Tom Wolfe in 1987 and then turned into a major film in 1990, The Bonfire of the Vanities is an epically miscast, less sanitized adaptation that infamously bombed heavily at the box office and critics in general, marked the beginning of the end of some careers (Brian De Palma and Melanie Griffith), and spawned a best-selling book that details on why this film failed so hard called "The Devil's Candy". If you're a fan of De Palma, Hanks or Willis, The Bonfire of the Vanities will leave you feel empty and will get fans of Tom Wolfe's book all riled up on what the studio managed to do with the source material.

3/10