via IMDB
"Wait till you see the practice field. It's great. I'm gonna have the bus take us over to the island."
"The practice field's on Long Island?"
"Yeah."
"The airport's on Long Island. You flew us in from the airport to here so we could take the bus back?"
"I couldn't get the band on the runway. They wouldn't let me, no matter how much money I offered."
"Oh, yeah. You can't play baseball without a band."
This week, my boss announced that we're allowed to return to a 40-hour workweek. I've been on furlough for about a month and a half. Just before it happened, we were told to have absolutely no overtime. Unfortunately, I did for the last regular workweek. For whatever reason, my boss shared this with not only my colleague-editor and me, but another colleague. I don't know if it was intended to put the fear of God in us or my boss wasn't thinking straight, but it was humiliating.
Not thinking clearly myself, I began considering revenge. Not so much on my supervisors, but on the powers that be. Let's call it cutting off my nose to spite my head. We were directed to work no more than 32 hours in a week and I was seriously considering going as low as 24 hours. I had (and ended up receiving) enough money to support myself and had tipped off payroll so that my hours wouldn't be too surprising. I was going to be a quiet but apparent martyr for efficiency.
Well, something funny happened. Obviously, I never put in a 24 hour workweek. For most of the time, my workweek was just over 30 hours total. It didn't take long to figure out I could fulfill a day's responsibilities and have plenty of time to waste online while still meeting the limitations placed on me. My scheme resulted in a Brewster's Millions situation. I couldn't win for losing.
"I'm gonna be crazy for a while. But I'm not crazy. People will think I am. You stick with me."
Monty Brewster (Richard Pryor), a washed up minor league pitcher, is the last surviving relative of the late Rupert Horn (one scene wonder Hume Cronyn). Horn's filmed will includes a proposition for Monty. If he can spend $30 million (more than $71 million in 2020) in 30 days, with every expenditure considered valuable and accounted for, no assets (including anything left of the $30 million) retained at the end of the month, no destruction of valuable items and no more than 5 percent each of the money used for charitable donations or gambling, than he'll inherit $300 million (more than $720 million in 2020). Horn intends to teach Monty, who's never had a salary higher than $11,000 a year, to hate spending money. He also can't tell the rules to anybody.
There's nothing wrong with making a high concept movie. There's nothing wrong, exactly, with playing follow the leader. There's a lot wrong when a high concept movie that's following the leader just isn't that well-written or directed. Walter Hill (48 Hrs.) helmed Millions, adapted from George Barr McCutcheon's 1902 novel by Timothy Harris & Herschel Weingrod (Trading Places).
"In their effort to turn Brewster's Millions into another Trading Places, Harris and Weingrod did everything short of tossing the title page and changing the character names."
-- Scott Tobias, The Dissolve, 2013
We've got Pryor in the Eddie Murphy role of the rags to riches black man. John Candy plays Spike, Monty's best friend. Lonette McKee plays Angela, keeping track of the money. Candy and McKee each fulfill aspects of Dan Aykroyd's role in Places. Spike's the designated buddy (which is why it's odd that Candy doesn't appear in Millions' last scenes). While it's possible that Angela and Monty are going to end up together, she's primarily the uptight foil who loosens up as things progress.
David White and Jerome Dempsey are Randolph and Mortimer Du ... excuse me, Granville and Baxter, the attorneys who will receive the $300 million if Monty fails. Stephen Collins is Warren, Angela's fiancé. Warren has three roles. He's sleazy and duplicitous, like Clarence Beeks and Todd, but also a little wacky, like Winthorpe. No such confusion comes with Pat Hingle as Roundfield, executor of the will and unmistakably the Denholm Elliott analogue.
The ensemble is completed by comparatively original characters including Monty and Spike's former coach (Jerry Orbach); an opportunist photographer (Joe Grifasi), other kindhearted members of Monty's entourage (Ji-Tu Cumbuka and David Wohl), Warren's interior decorator ex-wife (Tovah Feldshuh); and Peter Jason as a reporter whose broadcasts alternate with multiple scrolling texts (!) in providing Millions' exposition.
"Call it outrageous. Call it a breath of fresh air. But what you can no longer call it is a joke campaign. Eccentric multimillionaire Montgomery Brewster is electrifying crowds and is starting to show up in the polls. All this reporter can say is I hate to see what he could do if he was serious."
Millions is a poor comedy. My biggest laugh came when Monty used a stamp valued at $1.25 million to mail a postcard to Granville and Baxter. Otherwise, the movie goes from toothless gags about beating the odds investments and longshot bets that pay off (bringing iceberg portions to the Middle East; Loyola defeating Notre Dame in field hockey) to equally flimsy serious and satirical elements.
It's hard to care about Angela trying to shame Monty into responsibility, since we can't entirely buy them as either friends or lovers. It's harder to care about Monty's team, the Hackensack Bulls, getting to face the Yankees, since it's apparent that his best days are past him. This also undercuts the impact when Monty gets benched. It's hardest to care about Monty's kamikaze campaign for New York City mayor, or rather, for getting voters to reject more conventional candidates. In-universe, it inspires the city. In 2020, one thinks of Trump, Sanders, Bloomberg and Yang.
*Monty is having a hard time getting rid of his money*
"(regarding an unexpected $1.5 million won from gambling) I don't want it. I'll give it to charity. (to Angela) What's your favorite charity?"
"There are many worthwhile charities."
"Many worthwhile charities! Divide it up amongst the many charities and give it to them. (increasingly rambling) And go back to work, because this is a business ... and we're doing business, and nobody's business. Do it. Business. Good. I want business done."
So, do I recommend Brewster's Millions?
Yes
Yes, with reservations
X None of the above
Thoughts:
-- Box Office: Grossing $40.8 million on a $20 million budget according to Box Office Mojo, this opened at No. 3 and came in at No. 20 for 1985.
-- Critic's Corner: People: "Moralistic, old-fashioned ... an incoherent, slapdash mess." Tobias: "Dim, compromised, and dead on arrival." "Perhaps you can't make a truly funny movie about someone wasting $30 million without getting good and nasty," David Denby mused. "In making the point that wasting money is a terrible thing, (it's) much more successful than can have been intended," Janet Maslin wrote.
-- While the "room to die in" at the Plaza is impressive, I think the "Regular Guy Look" from Easy Money is the crowning achievement of "All that money on this?" in an '80s comedy. Discuss.
-- Memorable Music: We're still at 17-13 in favor of songs written for movies. I wasn't impressed with "In the Nick of Time," written by Huey Lewis & Ry Codder and sung by Patti LaBelle, enough to give a point.
-- Hey, It's ...!: Rosetta LeNoire, Yakov Smirnoff, Rick Moranis (cameoing in the truly awful role of "Morty King, king of the mimics") and Conrad Janis.
-- Hey, It's 2020!: Last month, U.S. Customers and Border Protection seized approximately $1 million worth of cocaine from a freighter on the Miami River. The total haul was 90 pounds. Can you imagine trying to get rid of 90 pounds of cocaine per day for 30 days straight? What about spending $1 million per day on prostitutes or hit men? Clearly, it's in Monty's best interest to waste his money legally.
-- Since I thought of the idea a few weeks ago, I've warmed up to the idea of a remake with meta humor. According to Wikipedia, it'd be the 12th film based on this story. This time around, Monty seeks to squander his $1 billion inheritance by financing a movie. He hires as many stars as possible, gives them bonuses for nudity, overwhelms the production with effects, gives the creative staff bonuses to rush things along, etc. Here's the third act twist (and it might be too offensive for right now): a situation comes up where theaters worldwide are closed and the streaming services are backed up with content. Monty, who would inherit $10 billion if he succeeds, attempts to argue that a remake of Brewster's Millions is not an asset.
-- "Why is it, whenever there's trouble, we're the ones who get in it?"
-- This was the first of four, count 'em, four, movies in 1985 featuring John Candy. Impressively, all were released in a span of just under three months. While it doesn't look like I'll be able to fit in Follow That Bird, I'll accept the readers' consensus on Summer Rental vs. Volunteers.
-- We're entering the summer of 1985, folks! Next: Rambo: First Blood Part II. On deck: A View to a Kill. Coming soon: Fletch.
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