So obviously everyone above a certain age is aware of this movie, because back when it came out, it inspired a zillion little thinkpiece essays and radio call-in segments and whatever else, right. But so, the actual movie can’t just be a high-concept “what would you do?” hook, it needs to have a plot and characters and stuff, and I had no idea what those were or would be. As it happens, I suspect that neither did the screenwriters, because it’s not super-great.

So basically we have Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson as a couple that’s deeply in love, which we know because they say so in voiceover narration, and never mind the scenes where Demi angrily throws things at, and hits Woody, haha, that’s just cool random domestic violence like any healthy relationship has.

So they run out of money because of “the recession” and PS a thing I love about the flattening of the past is that millennials will often talk about “the sustained economic boomtimes of the ’80s and ‘90s” and then skip right over the recession that got George H.W. Bush out of office and inspired grunge and all that, but ‘90s movies remember. So anyway, they’re going to lose their house, which is a special house that Woody has been designing because he’s an architect. What can they do? It seems hopeless… and then Woody wakes up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea: How about if they borrow $5K from his dad, and then go to Vegas and gamble successfully until that turns into $50K? Man, how did he not think of this bulletproof plan earlier.

Somehow, this ends up not working out, despite the 100% mathematical certainty that “put it all on red” should be an infallible gambling strategy, and they are now broke and going to lose everything. Until they meet up with Robert Redford playing Ted DiBiase (I promise this reference is hilarious if you remember minor ’80s WWF characters), who argues that everything is for sale, and then they’re like “lol not people” and he’s like “lol ok, but i’m a billionaire, so actually yeah,” and before you know it, Demi’s on his fuckboat, which the movie coyly cuts away from, leaving mysterious what actually happens there.

So that’s all the expected part, but then where the story goes after that is that Woody turns into a raging asshole who keeps blaming her for a thing they both agreed on together, and then she’s like “man, fuck this,” and leaves him. And meanwhile, Robert Redford is violating her boundaries all over the place by like following her around and telling her how much he loves her. I think the nineties was long enough ago, and romance in movies conventional enough, that when he goes to her class for new citizens and professes his admiration of her and the new immigrants in the class are all like “oh, this is so sweet and romantic,” we’re supposed to be sharing their emotion rather than noting how chillingly manipulative the whole scene is, but ps it’s a chillingly manipulative scene.

So anyway, Woody descends into drugs and madness (well, just alcoholism and sloppy angry maudlin drunk guy stuff), and she and Redford get together, and she and Woody get divorced, and then eventually Woody starts to pick himself up and gets a new job and stuff, and then there’s a scene near the end where Woody and Demi meet up and say goodbye, and Robert Redford is all like “she never looked at me the way she looked at him” so makes up a “lie” about how he’s a womanizing asshole and inspires Demi to dump him for her own good (because why not have one last act of manipulative dishonesty presented as if it’s admirable), and then the last scene is her getting back with Woody and they profess their eternal love for each other, and I bet that’ll go well.

Throughout this movie, Jess just kept shouting, “THERE ARE OTHER MEN IN THE WORLD, YOU DON’T NEED TO CHOOSE EITHER OF THESE ONES,” and this would have been a good lesson for Demi to learn. But honestly I think that any movie whose plot starts off with a couple deciding that playing roulette with borrowed cash is the solution to their money woes, is pretty much guaranteed to be full of people making bad decisions, so I guess really it just goes where you’d think from there. Not really recommended, but it is kind of a fun little trainwreck.