It’s the ‘80’s. There’s a boom in the market economies both in the U.S. and in the U.K. Peter Stock (Stu Harrison) and Alan Share (Charly Harrison) are trying to cash in on some of this capitalistic boom by trading in the British stock market for a wealthy cancer charity. (They reason that if charities lose money, they’re not penalized, but, if they make money, they can increase the salaries of the people who work for them.) By getting the charity to fund some high priced stock trading, Stock and Share hope to make an additional profit themselves. Unfortunately, when they decide to wager everything on BetaMax winning the video tape wars over VHS, they lose all of the charity’s money. (Never mind that BetaMax isn’t actually a company, but was—and still is—a product brand created and owned by Sony.)
Not only have they lost their chance at becoming rich quickly, they know that if their blunder gets out, their reputation as stock traders will be ruined. Aware that a ruined reputation is nearly impossible to piece back together, they decide to keep their loss a secret while they try to rebuild the $4.2 million pounds they lost.
They come up with a myriad of hare-brained schemes to recover the money, from creating new products to becoming hitmen. One of the more creative ideas they come up with is to create a board game called, “Capitalism: The Board Game.” Paired up with video clips that tell the players what capitalistic endeavors to engage in, it’s an idea that’s ahead of its time and, like their other ideas, a colossal failure. Another dismal failure is Peter’s idea to create a hit song called, “Money Makes the World Go ‘Round” with UK mega producer, Dickie. Figuring that he will be rolling in money when it blows up, he fails to realize he will only make money if he makes an entire album worth of songs, which is something he doesn’t have the creativity for.
As they try to come up with the perfect solution, the two partners will have to confront addictions, survive near death experiences, make after-life deals with Egyptian deities, and overcome a variety of other strange occurrences.
Content
While there’s a general plot to the movie, it’s a very loose story line that seems more of a framework for Stu and Charly Harrison’s bizarre conversations about politics, money, and greed, improv tangents, and strange skits. (Somewhat like Monty Python’s The Life of Bryan or The Holy Grail, but with more random tangents like you would see in Monty Python’s “Flying Circus.”) For one example of these skits, once the “Capitalism: The Board Game” idea is pitched, the rest of the movie has random video clips from the fictional game which serve as spacers between different acts and scenes in the film. Another example is where Alan accuses Peter of having a cocaine problem. When Peter claims he doesn’t, Alan recollects that Peter did a television advertisement for cocaine. At this point, they air the advertisement, which is more like an infomercial than an advertisement. While the concept is pretty funny, the fact that the skit drags on for eight minutes causes the finished piece to be much less amusing.
The overall feel of the film is a very mixed bag. Some skits and tangents are humorous and clever, while others just drag on. Because of this, the audience for this film is a bit unpredictable. Fortunately, folks can rent this online from Amazon Unbox to see if it’s the sort of humor they would enjoy.
