Stars: Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Kim Cattrall, John Hancock, Saul Rubinek, Morgan Freeman

Director: Brian De Palma

Summary: A millionaire who sneaks away from his wife and daughter to meet his mistress is involved in a road accident with a black man. A local black religious leader plans to use the accident to rally the community.

Brian De Palma (SCARFACE) directed this lavish adaptation of Tom Wolfe's best-selling satirical novel, featuring Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Bruce Willis. Hanks stars as Sherman McCoy, a distinctly 1980s brand of wealthy Wall Street wizard who takes a mighty fall from his glitzy lifestyle after he and his mistress (Griffith) put a Bronx youth into a coma via a hit-and-run accident. Alcoholic reporter Peter Fallow (Willis) sees the crime as an opportunity for big headlines, and soon Sherman is the target of every political and media group in the city, including an Al Sharpton-style black leader named Rev. Bacon (John Hancock) and a sleazy D.A. (F. Murray Abraham). SEX IN THE CITY babe Kim Catrall costars as Sherman's long-suffering wife, and Morgan Freeman is the judge who tries to reign in this three-ring media circus of a case. Like the decade it parodies, this film is proudly over the top in its lavishness. It's also filled to overflowing with inspired casting, wildly inventive comedy, and the sort of artistically ambitious tracking shots for which its director is renowned.

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Is it time, after the anonymous disaster of Mission to Mars, to give Brian De Palma's famously doomed film of Tom Wolfe's bulky novel Bonfire of the Vanitiesanother chance? The uproarious ins and outs of the film's troubled production have become well-known via Julie Salamon's account of its making, The Devil's Candy, and fans of that might want to flick between page and screen to see just when Melanie Griffith caused untold continuity problems by having her breasts inflated. Techno buffs will surely appreciate the pointless but somehow wonderful trickery of an extended tracking shot at the outset that exists only to last a few seconds longer than the one in Orson Welles Touch of Evil(1958). Tom Hanks was rather better cast than was generally allowed, as "master of the universe" Sherman McCoy, who comes a cropper after a hit-and-run accident, since his nice-guy act shows intriguing cracks. And even Bruce Willis does his best on a hiding to nothing as the drunken writer. It is funny in parts, agonising in others, and misses Wolfe's tone--but somehow its failures might make it as symptomatic of the long-gone excesses of the early 90s as the novel was of the 80s. --Kim Newman

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interactive Menus, Scene Access
Subtitles:	Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish
Year:	1990
Release Date:	January 1, 2000
Runtime:	120 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	D 012048
Keywords:	General, Wide, Screen, Bonfire, Vanities, Drama, Rescheduled
Genre:	Drama