THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES has gone down in history as one of the worst movie flops ever made and I'm inclined to agree. I have no interest in the material and I only watched this because De Palma directed; the director does his best to keep things interesting but unfortunately he can only do so much with the material and other than the opening tracking shot there's nothing very impressive here.The story is slow and long-winded and full of unpleasant characters. Bruce Willis is in it for name value but feels badly miscast in the role of the writer. Tom Hanks looks uncomfortable throughout and his character comes across as false and artificial. The less said about Melanie Griffith and her dreadful performance the better.The film just sort of drags on and on without ever achieving anything. I understand how it's supposed to be a satire of wealth and fame and the yuppie culture but the humour falls flat and the whole courtroom drama thing is dragged out to the degree that it becomes really boring. Other than the novelty of seeing Morgan Freeman in an against-type role this really is a pointless exercise.

"The Bonfire Of The Vanities" is an underrated gem directed by Brian DePalma (Scarface), and featuring an all-star cast including Academy Award winners Tom Hanks (Big, Forrest Gump), Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy), F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus), and a supporting cast including Bruce Willis (Die Hard), Melanie Griffith (Shining Through), and Kim Cattrall (Turk 182). The story depicts a decaying society infested with racism, greed, hypocrisy, and corruption. The particular society in focus here is New York City, where an incident that signifies a major clash between the white upper class and the black lower class becomes media dinner. Hanks plays Sherman McCoy, a wealthy businessman who cheats on his wife, played by Cattrall, with another rich man's wife Maria Ruskin, played by Griffith. The Bonfire Of the Vanities has no heroes. All the characters in the movie symbolize very dirty and corrupt people. The only voice of wisdom in the film is the judge, played by Freeman, hot off his Oscar nominated performance in Driving Miss Daisy, who gives a convincing speech at the end of the movie.The direction by Brian De Palma is brilliant, starting with the camera panorama sweeping across nighttime Manhattan from the top of the Chrysler Building with closeups of it's gargoyles, and ending with great elegant tuxedo and gowns for the ladies crowd scene of astonishing elegance and pomp made even greater by the background music (the music in this film is one of it's many great assets). The set decorations tell the "good taste" story in wonderful (and expensive) detail, and the script showing well educated, well mannered people speaking up and speaking out tells the "good taste" story verbally. "Bonfire Of Vanities" is an example of a latter day Hollywood major studio movie which succeeds in all ways, except for the way it was sold, and for the unjustified defamation it got from people close to it.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

This will be a short review. I had not watched this movie for over 20 years. When I originally watched it I thought it was a fair to good comedy but way over the top. Watching it in 2016 it no longer seems way over the top but a movie grounded in today's reality.Network, The Hospital, and The Bonfire of the Vanities are all movies that are 25+ years old. Yet all 3 of them seemed over the top when they were released but now they all seem clairvoyant about what would become the reality of 2016.It is interesting how at times life ends up imitating art. One wonders what other movies will be seen as over the top today but in 20+ years clairvoyant...

From what I can tell all the negative comments about this movie stem from the fact the book is far superior and that the movie doesn't do it justice. I have not read this particular book but I have read many other Tom Wolfe novels and he writes some damn good yarns so it is not surprising the movie isn't as good. It can be hard to translate a good piece of fiction into a comparably good movie.All I can say is that I laughed out loud in a lot of parts and admired the movie for what it is. A very good piece of satire. This movie had all the main elements of a society in decay and shows the true nature of the majority of people. Mankind is ultimately out for themselves and people will do what they can to get ahead no matter who they have to step on to get there even if it means lying and causing grief to innocent people. The amount of pretentious prats in this movie reminds of many people I know. This movie had it down pat when it came to showing the exact nature of politicians. They really don't care. They just want to get re-elected so they can keep their snouts in the public trough.So don't listen to all the nay sayers on here this is a very good movie and will have you entertained for a couple of hours. In reality this movie is a 6.5 to 7.0 but I rated it an 8 to provide some compensation for all the harsh critics on here.