Quote:
Originally Posted by karamazonk
wat
I'll steal this from a post I wrote on another forum 10 years ago:
Let's say there are two groups of people:
1) People who read the book. These people are going to be (should be, at least) appalled at the lack of detail in this movie. Rather than spending time providing the (really interesting) details of the various aspects of Enron's decline, the moviemakers decide to interject cute clips like dice rolling across a craps table, or a metaphorical astronaut falling back to earth, or a motocross biker jumping across a canyon. One of the strangest interjections was a fairly lengthy (and graphic) segment showing a bunch of strippers, just to illustrate that Lou Pai (Enron Energy CEO) used to love strip clubs. Just to be clear - this struck me as not an unbiased documentary, but as a political film.
2) People who didn't read the book. These people aren't going to learn anything at all because there is virtually nothing of substance talked about. Yes, there are allegations of Enron doing wrong and (less pronounced) allegations of Andersen and the I-Banks doing wrong, but there's no meat there. If you haven't read the book but think you know something about Enron, save your time and skip the movie. The movie doesn't have enough substance to change your mind, but it's got enough flash to reinforce an unsubstantiated opinion.
The only upside to watching the movie is seeing actual footage of various historical events. What I found interesting (and fairly represented, based on my understanding) was:
- the advice for Enron employees to own 100% stock in their retirement accounts.
- C-span footage of Skilling interviews in Congress. (But I'm also a sucker for that Buffett clip talking about the Salomon scandal in congress.)
- other archival footage of Enron execs extolling the virtues of various business strategies.
Overall, I'm very interested in this topic and was a huge fan of the Elkin/McLean book. When I talk about accounting (which is more frequent than I'd like), I often refer to specific Enron transactions/deals as being especially egregious. Unfortunately, this tried to capture the emotion of the book, but without any substance, it just struck me as a politicized screed.
I haven't been this disappointed by a book-movie transition since "Simon Birch".