Millions is the latest effort by the man who brought you 28 Days Later and Trainspotting. The critics have gone gaga over it.
Some minor spoilers follow. No specific details, but if you don’t want to know anything, stop reading.
In very general terms, I liked the style. I thought the young boy and his relationship with his brother was very interesting. The movie was very effective in showing the different world views, and letting them play out from a kid’s perspective, ultimately saying a lot about the adult perspective.
Great characters.
Great handling of the young boy’s gift – that was a very interesting angle.
I liked a lot of the sylistic stuff, the cell phones, the “screensaver” type touches, the house building, how the bad guy was introduced.
There were some great humorous moments, notably the older boy and his entourage.
The movie just got a little garbled about the time the adults discovered the money. The last 15 minutes just kind of left me going, “where the hell did all of this come from.”
Overall, I liked it. It wasn’t as fully entertaining as Boyle’s other movies, but was definitely a little deeper, maybe more heartfelt. I don’t know how I would have ended it, but I thought it could have been a little tighter.
It really wanted to see this movie but I couldn’t talk my 13 year old into it. Instead we saw “Miss Congeniality 2”. She has now cajoled me into taking her to the 3 Worst Movies of 2005 (the other 2 were “Man of the House” and “The Pacifer”).
I have got to be more assertive.
It’s got a lot of funny stuff kids are doing, and it’s main characters are kids, but the movie is NOT about 2 kids going wild when they stumble across a bunch of money, like some kid version of Brewster’s Millions. It’s about the temptations and troubles of money, more like a kid version of A Simple Plan.
When I went with the wife, I think there were probably 100 people there, and about 4 kids. Of course it was a Friday night at kind of an art-house place in the middle of Baltimore.
I guess it is a family film, because there’s no swearing or nudity or real violence, but in my opinion, the themes are pretty heavy. It’s definitely more melancholy than your typical family film.