‘Other People’s Money’ (R)

"Other People's Money" might as well be titled "Other People's Movies" for all the fresh insight it brings to the subject of '80s excess. Call it "Wall Street," "The Fisher King," "Regarding Henry," "Bonfire," "True Colors," "Robin Hood" or "Scrooged." By any other name, the message is the same: The economy's gone bust, so there's a bull market in traditional values. If you don't know these values by heart yet, "Other People's Money" is a good investment. A lesson in Capra-nomics, it is full of hokum and homilies, most of them delivered Ten Commandments style by Gregory Peck. It's a movie designed to rise not to a climactic turn of plot but to the Big Speech. In this case, it is the "All Americans make anymore is hamburgers" speech.

Peck plays Andrew "Jorgy" Jorgenson, the stubborn owner of the proud, old New England Wire & Cable Co., a debt-free enterprise that employs many ordinary Americans. Alas, the company has become a takeover prospect for Larry the Liquidator, a rapacious, Bronx-bred money-grubber played with pugilistic oom-pah-pah by Danny DeVito.

Lawrence "Larry" Garfield is a takeover troll who bleeds decent American companies of their assets, devouring them much as he does his favorite doughnuts -- Dunkin, in case you missed the truck, the shops or the numerous boxes. (Advertising in movies: Now there's a traditional value.) This time, the fiscal squirt has met his match in Jorgy's sexy corporate attorney, Kate Sullivan.

Penelope Ann Miller, the nice girl in "Awakenings," is transformed into the "Working Girl" of the bar as the salacious Kate. When it comes to defending Jorgy & Co., she's more likely to show off her legs than legalese. When she arrives in Larry's office for the first time, you'd think he had looked her up in the Yellow Pages under Dominatrix. He's smitten, but maybe she is and maybe she isn't.

Will boy get girl? Will boy get buyout? Frankly, my dear, we haven't got an emotional stake in the happiness of these two stinkers. And while DeVito works double time to sell the movie, he remains one of the romantically challenged. And we don't want to see the toad get the girl -- especially not this tart. They'd get together and give birth to little cartoon product spokesmen.

Producer-director Norman Jewison, who has successfully converted stage productions as diverse as "A Soldier's Play" and "Fiddler on the Roof" to screen, doesn't have a lot to work with in Alvin Sargent's adaptation of Jerry Sterner's off-Broadway hit. In opening up the five-person play, Sargent gave up its cohesiveness -- too many scenes just have characters skitting from here to there. Developments are so scarce there's a longish scene in which DeVito brushes his teeth.

"Other People's Money" has lost its gist in translation. Larry, a life form lower than spitballs in the off-Broadway play, has become, yes, a kinder, gentler Larry. Just trying to keep up with the times, reports Jewison, whose approach to his film is as equivocal as George Bush's take on the recession. Yes, America, there is always a market for bull.

"Other People's Money" is rated R for language.