An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Just as Network can be watched to gain an education about television politics, and Wall Street can be watched to learn about, well, greed, Other People's Money is just as educational as it is entertaining. And since it's highly entertaining, that's saying a lot! Danny DeVito plays a slimy scumbag who makes business deals and often destroys companies. His next target: Gregory Peck's and Piper Laurie's struggling company. If you don't know what a corporate takeover is, the movie will teach you. As the old-world and new-world views clash, the old-timers pull out a secret weapon: their daughter. Penelope Ann Miller, while clad in some beautiful outfits, sasses and teases Danny DeVito as he tries to ruin her parents, hoping that the sexual tension will cause him to weaken or falter. I don't happen to find her very attractive, but Alvin Sargent's screenplay, based on Jerry Sterner's play, has given her some very good lines! Yes, no one likes to see a corporate goon pick on poor ol' Gregory Peck, but it's actually a really enjoyable movie. And, amazingly enough, besides the heavy subject matter, the movie is a comedy! For some great one-liners, some steamy romantic banter, and an economics lesson, you can't go wrong by watching Other People's Money.

Larry Garfield (Danny Devito), is a corporate raider, deconstructing and selling off failing companies for prophet. Short and egotistical donut popping Larry or as his adversaries call him "Larry The liquidator", has his eye on buying out a New England based cable and wire company. This small town company employs most of it's residence. Owner in the autumn years the infamous Gregory Peck as Andrew Jorgenson and his wife Bea (Piper Laurie).Short and pudgy Garfield travels to Rhode Island and enters the factory and already complains about too many stairs but explains that a buy out is more wise than staying barely afloat. Jorgenson demands that he leaves the premises but the reality is there . Enter Stepdaughter/business attorney Kate Sullivan (Penelope Ann Miller). Smart, elegant yet feisty as Jorgenson has a plan to have Kate captivate the money hungry Larry and have him change his mind about swaying the stockholders. Jorgenson was right about Larry being smitten with Kate but as far as business goes Larry is not budging. Wife Bea makes a special trip to Larry's Manhattan headquarters offering one million dollars in greenmail to go away but Larry kindly tells the desperate woman, "I don't take money from widows and orphans." Meanwhile the company's President Bill Coles,(Dean Jones) is fearful of a company takeover forcing him into unemployment with no severance, offers his vote of the shares in Garfield's favor for one million dollars but only if the share make up the margin of victory.In that case he'll receive half. The dyes have been cast and the final showdown at the plant will take place. Iconic Gregory Peck's plea to keep the company afloat and little loud mouth Danny DeVito making sense of a changing economy telling the stockholders to invest in something else. Norman Jewison magic hasn't lost it's luster as DeVito and Peck work well together. Love the failed courtship between Devito and Miller as well. I thought this was a great vehicle for Danny DeVito in one of his most finest performances in his long and interesting career. Alvin Sargent's screen writing is superb as the rebuttal scenes at the plant are priceless . The two actors with their cadence and mannerism make the scenes so real. I give this movie half a dozen donuts out of ten.

Based on Jerry Sterner's stage play of the same name, Other People's Money, rewritten for the screen by Alvin Sargent and directed by veteran Norman Jewison, delivers an entertaining treatise on the practice of hostile corporate takeovers and the tug-of-war between stockholder interests and employee welfare. Danny DeVito plays Lawrence Garfield (a.k.a., Larry the Liquidator), a notorious Wall Street corporate raider, whose most recent target is a New England manufacturer of wire and cable. On the side of the employees' interests is Andrew Jorgensen, the company's leader, splendidly played by Gregory Peck, and his stepdaughter Kate Sullivan (Penelope Ann Miller), whom he hires as his attorney to defend the company against liquidation. Miller is slightly miscast as the seductive, hard-ball playing, small-town-girl-turned-cosmopolitan, but, then again, so is DeVito. He's a tad too likable out of the gate; she's a trifle skewed to the simpler, softer side of the character. Both of them rise to the occasion with such talent and verve that they make their respective roles come off as the ones they were born to play. These are meaty parts, and these two actors have never been better. And you may not predict it, but their on screen chemistry is quite palpable. Jewison shows a nicely developed eye and ear for scene variety and continuity. The writers show a comparable aptitude for scene-to-scene rhythm, balance, and semantic connectivity and contrast. One case of juxtaposition particularly demonstrates this aptitude, while simultaneously punctuating the spectrum of loyalties that spans the film's central conflict. Jorgensen's right-hand man, Bill Coles (Dean Jones), who feels he is owed a "golden parachute" for his years of hard work and dedication, approaches Larry in secret and offers him the right to vote his shares in exchange for a million dollars. Coles has defected to Garfield's side, but he feels guilty about it. "Everybody looks out for their own self-interest," he says to Garfield, looking for some kind of moral reassurance. None is forthcoming. Garfield has already come to that conclusion: survival of the fittest; he is pure capitalism. Shortly after this scene, Jorgensen's wife and Kate's mother, Bea (Piper Laurie), secretly meets with Larry and offers him a million dollars to call off his fight. Garfield can't believe it. She hopes to appeal to his sense of decency. "I don't take money from widows or orphans," Garfield explains. "I make them money." All of this leads to a "proxy bloodbath" in which Larry and Jorgy, in beautifully written and brilliantly delivered speeches, summarize each side of the argument with clarity of position and passionate conviction. David Newman's score is a touch too whimsical for the material, but it fits in with the overly tidy, "happy" Hollywood ending. Then again, the resolution isn't impossible. Larry makes it clear that he doesn't care whether they make wire and cable or airbags, or whether they lose their jobs or keep them, as long as he makes money. And he does, even if it's other people's money.

It's been a few years since I saw Other People's Money, but I just watched Time Changer last night, and it brought this movie to mind. If you've seen both or read descriptions of both you might think they have nothing in common, but I think they share this: They are probably the two most "serious" movies I have ever seen, in the sense that both seriously present complex philosophical issues.Other People's Money has a plot and a story, of course. But at heart, it is a discussion about a serious social question: How should we as a society deal with changing technology and economic circumstances? The movie sets up two opposing characters: Gregory Peck's character takes the position that society must be compassionate. Just because a business is no longer efficient or is producing an obsolete product doesn't justify putting them out of business and putting all the employees out of work. At one point he makes a moving speech for giving people a chance to adapt and find solutions to get the company back on its feet. Danny DeVito's character says that real compassion is to get everybody out of a losing enterprise and working someplace that is actually productive. In my opinion, both sides are given a fair hearing in the movie. This is one of the few movies that fairly presents both sides of a controversial issue.From a dramatic, story-telling point of view, DeVito's character is great. MINOR SPOILER HERE: When we first see him he comes across as a crude, greedy jerk. But then gradually we see that this is just an act that he puts on. Watch especially for the scene in the Japanese restaurant: it sums up the paradoxes of his character.