The Bonfire of the Vanities - 4

This film is based on the 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. He is also the author of the more recent book I Am Charlotte Simmons. These stories are actually very similar, the former is set in 1980's New York involving a rich Wall Street deal maker, the later is about college life. Both stories are about how people learn and adjust to the morality of their day, or in both of these cases lose their sense of moral meaning, and find themselves lost in the cosmos. I imagine the book is better than the movie, because Wolfe is a long winded author which makes for some really detailed descriptions that even film has a hard time with (If you are going to read anything by Wolfe, read his non-fiction, especially his 2000 book called Hooking Up. He really should have just kept writing as a journalist). The medium of film in this case fails to give the audience the whole story and ends up being a cheesy comedy when in actuality the books is a social commentary on the loss of virtue in our society (Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind came out shortly after this book). Although the film has a cast staring Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis, the film is mis-cast and overall a flop.