About that excessive movie about excess

With reluctance, as I considered there was an excellent chance I would not like it, I watched Wolf of Wall Street on Saturday (on Netflix).   

And (surprise!), I didn't care for it.

That was pretty much going to be a certainty when Matthew McConaughey turned up unexpectedly in the first 10 minutes.   Actually, while this segment was pretty funny for its bizarre aspects, he still lived up to being my personal talisman for warning that the movie will be, at the very least, badly flawed.

My main problems with the movie?:

a.    it's excessively about crass excess - in such a way that it hurt the sense of realism.  I would say it  very often seemed more cartoonish than realistic.  Even apart from the scenes of carnal excess, which (as I expected) were extreme and many, I thought the whole trading floor atmosphere seemed over the top and fake.  Too many people in too small a place; too much noise; too much adoring love for their boss when they thought he was going.   The day after watching the movie, I did see on Youtube some video showing the real lead character (Jordan Belfort), both when the movie came out, and back in the 1990's.   These reinforced my impression that the artistic licence taken in showing this world went too far.  I appreciate that some people would have wanted to see the movie to see how outrageous the life of the rich and crass could be - but to me, it looked too unrealistic too often.

b.  It is way too long - both in so many individual scenes, and overall.   I read David Edelstein's review after watching it, and fully agree with this part:

In interviews, Scorsese’s brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker has said it was hard to cut the film down from four hours. Four hours?! As I watched, I kept thinking that every scene could be snipped at the halfway point, before yet another hot-dog monologue or leering shot of Belfort’s second wife, the startlingly pretty but soulless ­Naomi, the “Duchess of Bay Ridge,” played by Margot Robbie. I figured Leo must have been sitting in the editing room saying, “No, no, don’t cut here — my favorite line is coming up — 30 more seconds — okay, a minute — wait, let it run! It’s my Oscars scene!” But no, this was Scorsese’s design. Overkill is the ruling aesthetic.

c.  While I don't say it had to be more of a morality play, as it does fit into Scorsese's love of stories about corrupt men who think they have it made and then things start falling apart, there is one key scene which is problematic:  the one where the FBI agent (the best played character in the film, if you ask me, and I did think his scene on the yacht - invented for the movie - was well written and acted) is on the subway after seeing Belfort face justice at last.  As Edelstein writes:

The Wolf of Wall Street is three hours of horrible people doing horrible things and admitting to being horrible. But you’re supposed to envy them anyway, because the alternative is working at McDonald’s and riding the subway alongside wage slaves. What are a few years in a minimum-security prison — practically a country club — when you can have the best of everything?

I think Edelstein is going too far in saying Scorsese wants the audience to envy the characters on screen, but it is hard to interpret the subway scene as anything other than invitation to share a moment of doubt that maybe it's sad that more people don't get to live life to a drug addled, VD infected, lobster eating, full.   As I say, problematic.

d.  A dated gratuitousness to the display of female nudity.   I hesitate to raise this, because I can see an argument that it suits the movies and pop culture of the era in which it was set.   But I just couldn't avoid thinking about it after the scene near the end where the Swiss banker waits for his young lover under his bed sheets, but when she makes her appearance, it's like a deliberate pause for a bit of full frontal nudity before getting under the sheets, which then start flying about in a Benny Hill style caricature of sex.   That just struck me as the way it would have been done in a 1980's flick, but not these days.   Sure, earlier there was Leonardo's butt side on during a (again) pointlessly protracted sex scene, and there was a comedy flash of a (presumably) prosthetic penis; but in retrospect, I think it is fair to say that the whole movie looked dated in the way the flesh displayed was primarily female.   (Although - now that I think of it - was trying to get more gender balance in skin on display the reason for the odd scene in which the college band came into the workplace floor but with the guys wearing no shirts?   That just looked weird in its own way to me - I can't see the uber macho male brokers being impressed, and there were few females working there anyway.)  

So there you go.  My thoughts, in too much detail, probably.