The Monopoly Movie is Worse Than We Thought

Published by Jeff Leins on: November 12th, 2009

Can we get one thing out of the way? Monopoly is boring. The entire game is rolling the dice, passing money around the table and occasionally, when the excitement is at its riveting peak, drawing a card.

It’s an educational game for kids learning to count money or a welcome diversion when a severe thunderstorm sends you back to the stone age, but in this modern, fast-paced world of instant entertainment, sitting down for a 12-hour traditional board game just becomes tedious.

Sure, everyone has played it before, but how recently and how many times have you truly finished a game? Monopoly games usually end when everyone gets bored and surrenders, or a player flips the board in a fit of rage, sending tiny green houses flying.

Universal purchased the movie rights to Monopoly from Hasbro in early 2008 as part of a six-year partnership to bring more toy properties to the big screen. Transformers was a certified success and G.I. Joe was poised for it’s own franchise, so the studio started attaching top talent to movies based on the Battleship, Candy Land, Stretch Armstrong, and Clue.

At the time, Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator) had signed to make Monopoly a reality, effectively surprising everyone, including the writer making the original pitch.  In an interview with Frank Beddor, the LA Times’ Geoff Boucher uncovered more details about what got Scott involved.

Beddor told him, “I created a comedic, lovable loser who lives in Manhattan and works at a real estate company and he’s not very good at his job but he’s great at playing Monopoly. And the world record for playing is 70 straight days – over 1,600 hours – and he wanted to try to convince his friends to help him break that world record. They think he is crazy. They kid him about this girl and they’re playing the game and there’s this big fight. And he’s holding a Chance card and after they’ve left he says, ‘Damn, I wanted to use that Chance card,’ and he throws it down. He falls asleep and then he wakes up in the morning and he’s holding the Chance card, and he thinks, ‘That’s odd.’”

“He’s all groggy and he goes down to buy some coffee and he reaches into his pocket and all he has is Monopoly money. All this Monopoly money pours out. He’s confused and embarrassed and the girl reaches across the counter and says, ‘That’s OK.’ And she gives him change in Monopoly money. He walks outside and he’s in this very vibrant place, Monopoly City, and he’s just come out of a Chance Shop. As it goes on, he takes on the evil Parker Brothers in the game of Monolopy. He has to defeat them. It tries to incorporate all the iconic imageries — a sports car pulls up, there’s someone on a horse, someone pushing a wheelbarrow — and rich Uncle Pennybags, you’re going to see him as the maître d’ at the restaurant and he’s the buggy driver and the local eccentric and the doorman at the opera. There’s all these sight gags.”

Exactly what you might expect from Monopoly: The Movie.  Sight gags and cute little references.  Nothing says crackling dialogue like “You owe me $12 for the rent on Virginia Avenue.”  Plus the Parker Brothers are evil, the two men who made the game a success?

What made Ridley Scott decide this was a worthy concept escapes me.  At no point since experiencing Alien did I ever think the same man would remake Jumanji.  Pamela Pettler (Monster House, Corpse Bride, 9) is the screenwriter on board (get it?).  I guess they’re both “rolling the dice.”  (Look, I’m referencing the game!  Isn’t that clever!)

I acknowledge that Beddor’s idea was just the original concept, and it will likely (hopefully) be re-written as the script continues through development, but if the final product is anything like this Alice in Wonderland rip-off, it will be a disaster.  No amount of a “beautiful visual component” can cover up a story where the protagonist is winking every time a shoe or a thimble are on screen.