Majikat
A fun and feel good kind of film, a trip back to a childhood film, pulled off greatly by the comedy great Richard Pryor.
Gubby-Allen
An enjoyable enough film, which Richard Prior does as well as anybody could with. But it is nowhere near as good as it felt as a child or that it could have been.The plot and the rules of the challenge are an absolute mess and endless list of inconsistencies. He was told that he was not allowed to buy somebody a diamond ring say, or have assets but then spent most of the film buying gifts and items which could be constituted as an asset.The more that the film went on, the more daft that the premise became. When he was dishing out salaries he could have made each one bigger to spend more money.
FlashCallahan
Brewster has an unknown distant, but wealthy relative who has just passed on. In order to test if Brewster knows the value of money, he is given the task of disposing of $30m in 30 days. Brewster isn't allowed to have any assets to show for the $30m or waste the money in any way. If successful, Brewster gets to inherit $300m. The biggest problem of all however, is that Brewster can't tell anyone what he's doing, so everyone thinks he's crazy. But I'd Brewster fails, two scheming trustees will get their hands on the money, so Brewster's task is not an easy one......It's the old story isn't it, little man overcoming the bigwigs. Everyone likes a long-shot, the poor man outsmarts the rich, its Robin Hood for the fat cats, and we have the profanity free Richard Pryor in the drivers seat.It's the most predictable type if comedy you can imagine. He's starts doing well, he silly but good spirited friend messes it up a bit, he gets back on track, the villains of the film mess it up big time for him, and just at the last minute, something wonderful happens.It's been done literally hundreds of times in these sort of family comedies, and in can understand that its a winning formula, but oh to see something different just for once, to see the hero of the piece fail, it would be so refreshing, but seeing that this is almost thirty years old, you can forgive its laziness.Pryor is as good as he always is, and Candy offers wonderful support, but one cannot help but think that if Trading Places wasn't such a hit two years 'Pryor' (he he), would this have been made?Worth watching...
tavm
A few days after seeing the 1945 Brewster's Millions, I finally watched the remake that was released 40 years later. It starred Richard Pryor as Monty Brewster, here a minor league baseball player who sees film of his late grandpa (Hume Cronyn) who tells him the conditions of his will. John Candy is Pryor's baseball buddy, Lonette McKee-who previously co-starred with him in Which Way is Up?-is his accountant, Candy's "SCTV" co-star Rick Moranis is someone who likes to repeat whatever someone next to him says, and David White-who I remember as Larry Tate on "Bewitched"-is one of the executers of the will. This wasn't as funny as the previous version I watched but I still had some good laughs watching Pryor, Candy, Moranis, and some of the changes in some scenes. So on that note, this version of Brewster's Millions is worth a look.