Fortunately (or maybe not, depending on your preferential taste) this story works better as an allegory-fable about capitalism than as a romantic comedy. It's an adaptation of a theatrical play that raises many questions about the purpose of capitalism in civilized society. It particularly offers the conflicting arguments during an extraordinary shareholders' meeting: do businesses exist merely to enrich investors or do shareholders sign an obliging pact with those who labor on their behalf? It's overall a straightforward, candid and convincing defense of capitalism - therefore a respectable variant to the infamous Gecko speech in Oliver Stone's 'Wall St.' Its comedic end is compromising, though: a predictable Hollywood cocktail of morality and romance. The main philosophical arguments in the play (in short, capitalism is a necessary part of progress, and the old must be destroyed in order to create the new) is eventually sacrificed to romantic comedy, and all the fundamental questions about capitalism remain unanswered. (Of course film & entertainment mean suspension of disbelief, and there is, anyway, no easy answer) Here, free-market liberalism wins the day and Hollywood bets on its side, coming out on top: happiness IS at the end of the capitalist progress - so argued Adam Smith, the author who was an important party to the Scottish Enlightenment, the spiritual thinker who believed that the invisible hand behind the market belongs to God.
Review of Other People's Money
