I just ran across an interesting item on The Stock Dork website, a list of the most profitable movies about money ever made.
“The popularity of movie themes and genres can highlight public anxieties and misconceptions, so we wanted to analyze the highest-grossing movies about money, to see if they could offer an insight into public opinion on finance,” noted Adam Garcia of The Stock Dork.
Garcia rounded up the usual suspects. Wall Street, The Wolf on Wall Street, and The Big Short all make a list that’s topped by Ocean’s Eleven, the George Clooney heist remake from 2001. The star-studded movie about stealing money from Vegas casinos was a big hit but it’s not number-one. After accounting for inflation, The Sting, the Paul Newman-Robert Redford number from 1973, did better.
Nevertheless, compiling a list of movies about money is no easy task. After all, where do you draw the line? If heist movies are in there, what about gangster flicks? Crime movies almost always involve money. After all, The French Connection did pretty well in 1971. Wasn’t Goldfinger about money? The guy was after the biggest prize of all: Fort Knox.
Among the interesting films on the Stock Dork list was the 1990 Martin Scorsese hit, Goodfellas, the movie that allowed Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci to forge roles they refined in Casino five years later.
Then there’s Brewster’s Millions. But instead of the 1985 Richard Pryor vehicle, I prefer the 1945 original, a screwball comedy that starred Dennis O’Keefe as a discharged World War II soldier who has to spend $1 million in two months to receive $7 million. Those are the terms of a will his deceased uncle has left him. He can’t tell anybody about it, either.
It‘s a lot of nonsense but fun from the start with Eddie “Rochester” Anderson opening the film singing “As Johnny Comes Marching Home” while cleaning a window to see our WWII hero return.
Further down the list of top-grossing money movies is Office Space, the Mike Judge-directed classic from 1999 that starred Ron Livingston and Jennifer Aniston (as the waitress with flair). Stealing that show, of course, were Gary “Yeah, we’re going to need you to come in Saturday” Cole as Lumbergh, and Stephen Root as the groveling Milton.
If we’re handing out awards to money movies, let’s recognize a movie that’s not on the list: Jerry McGuire, the 1996 Tom Cruise effort for its Casablanca-like cascade of quotes that became famous: “Show me the money.” “You had me at hello.” “You complete me.” “Help me help you.”
In addition to the most successful money movies, the Stock Dork also lists some of the biggest losers. One of the films on that list was the 1994 Coen Brothers work, The Hudsucker Proxy (possibly one of the worst titles for a movie ever). It may not have made money but it made me laugh. Let’s leave you with the mailroom scene.