The Wolf of Wall Street

Being that I am a douchebag who works in sales, and this is an accurate description of every sales person that has ever existed by the way; I like to consider myself an expert on what qualifies as a great salesman’s movie. I swear part of the prerequisite training is that you watch movies like Glen Gary Glen Ross, Wall Street, and for some reason Boiler Room. Boiler Room??? Ben Affleck, Giovanni Ribisi, and Vin Diesel are supposed to teach me how to be a better salesman? Affleck couldn’t even sell big booty Jen Lopez on allowing him a bachelor party for their wedding. I guess she had a flashback to her days as a Fly Girl on In Living Color when she actually had the smallest ass on set; she was afraid he’d leave her for one of those Montreal strippers. As it turns out, he left her for a primate look alike in Jen Garner. Go figure. And the only thing the Diesel can sell me on is paying $10 to see him make a cameo in a street car racing movie that involves a hick in Japan.

The point is, every salesman swears by these movies and will sneer at you in disgust if you talk bad about them. Well, I have a feeling that The Wolf of Wall Street is about to surpass them all. The initial preview they released months ago made it look awful with the totally taken out of context scene between McConaughey and Leo where he is doing this weird tribal rap/dance thing. In the context of the movie, that scene is actually pretty money as McConaughey is showing Leo the ropes and teaching him how to stay on top in Wall Street. This is when you get your first taste of drugs and alcohol.

The entire movie is literally nothing but sex, drugs, and alcohol; and while Scorsese tried his best to make it look like a cautionary tale, the fact that you laughed the entire way through, saw the unbelievably hot women they had, and the ridiculous amount of money they made in the process; you couldn’t help but leave the theater thinking that Jordan Belfort (Leo) was kind of the man. No wonder why this super old actress almost slapped him after seeing a special screening. Look, everyone has crazy tales of doing drugs, drinking alcohol, or even having weird sexual escapades but the trick is to make them stand out from everyone else’s. And this is where Terrance Winter and Marty Scorsese shine. It’s as if Winter wrote everything that he couldn’t get away with in The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire, which is saying a lot if you watch either of those shows. And even though I had my doubts, Scorsese was a master at turning every cloud of cocaine or every pursuit of the ultimate Quaalude into the funniest thing you’ve ever seen.

I don’t want to give any jokes away but the scene that literally almost had me and the entire theater peeing in our pants was when a nearly catatonic Leo used a Popeye cartoon that was on in the background as his inspiration to do an entire vial of cocaine to give him the energy he needed to help save his friend. Trust me when I say it was epic. And so it went, with every sexual encounter that involved a prostitute, with every midget that was thrown at a large bulls eye, and with every disgusting act that followed a large amount of drugs being taken, you found yourself laughing harder and sadly enough cheering for the corrupt people that were on screen.

The plot is simple as you basically follow the creation on this monster better known as Jordan Belfort. You see him start on the worst day of the stock market since 1929; it was so bad that it caused his major firm to fail and he was left selling nothing but worthless penny stocks. He however somehow finds a creative way to turn this into a multi million dollar business but along the way, greed as well as the alcohol, drug, and sex dependencies he picks up with it, slowly sends his life into a tailspin; one that he somewhat embraces. You can't help but see the inevitable ending that is to come but you along with Belfort could care less as you are simply enjoying the ride. Leo owns this role as does Jonah Hill as his super Jewish right hand man. Hill’s crowning moment comes during yet another epic party as he comes up with the idea to sell Steve Madden stock which is later followed by him masturbating in the middle of said party. Again, trust me when I say you have to see it.

If you can’t tell by now, I absolutely loved this movie even though it was 3 hours long. This is easily the funniest movie I have seen in years as I laughed the entire way through it. And my buddy added that it even surpasses Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as the best drug movie ever. I rate this movie as TIGHT and strongly suggest you see it.