How Hollywood gets money wrong

For neither love nor money

The 2006 movie "Friends With Money" was so packed with financial lies and fantasies that I don't know where to start.

Jennifer Aniston stars as a housecleaner who is single and broke. Yet somehow she stays friends with three wealthy couples who are incredibly self-absorbed and annoying.

(She also meets a guy who wants to watch her clean and then have sex with her -- and then demands part of her measly earnings, which she actually gives him, but let's just stick to the main plot points.)

At one point, one couple reveal they are donating $2 million to their daughter's preschool. But later they refuse to lend Aniston's character a couple of thousand so she can make a career switch.

Reality check No. 1: Picture yourself in the same situation -- a rich friend who loves to spend, you summoning up the nerve to ask for help in making a life-altering leap. She refuses. In any normal friendship, this would have been grounds for a bitter, screaming fight before clubbing the friend with her own Gucci purse.

Instead, Aniston's character sulks but stays friends because, in the end, how can you measure money against a loving, generous relationship? Besides, she likes being a maid.

Reality check No. 2: Despite Aniston's inability to take care of herself financially or ditch her mean friends, it's all OK because . . . guess what happens? That's right! She cleans the house of a slob who happens to be loaded! It's a miracle, and she doesn't even have to lose her shoe or ride in a pumpkin.

It's not such a wonderful life after all

In case you grew up watching this holiday sniffler every year as I did, you might want to scroll past the ugly financial truth behind Jimmy Stewart's most famous role, as small-town banker George Bailey.

Although banking is not my forte, here is the lowdown from Jonathan Lipson, a bankruptcy law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, who said in an e-mail that "most people who teach in my areas know that 'It's a Wonderful Life' is the most unrealistic portrayal of banking and financial behavior imaginable."

Not only does Bailey take over the bank from his dad and run it with his Uncle Billy, who is a bit of a tippler, Bailey is shown making an insider loan to his one-time flame, Violet, "which is certain never to be repaid," Lipson notes.

Also, Bailey indulges in "profligate collection practices -- he doesn't foreclose on deadbeats; and gross negligence, as when he gives Uncle Billy $8,000 in cash to deposit, which Billy loses, and which leads to the ultimate confrontation with nemesis Potter, the hard-nosed villain who runs the competing -- and competent -- bank," Lipson says.

Reality check: "In the real world, Bailey wouldn't be the town hero. He'd be shipped off to Leavenworth," Lipson says sternly.

Published May 29, 2008

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