Hey folks, Harry here with an early preview screening of Danny Boyle's kid flick entitled MILLIONS... yes, you read that right. What's up with cool people making kid movies? Shouldn't that be left to Disney treadmill monkey workers? Not if we want free thinking individuals that would rather watch Zombie movies! Whew. Here ya go...

Harry,

This is a first time submission for me, so forgive me if it's awkwardly written. I went to a screening of Fox Searchlight's MILLIONS by Danny Boyle last night - from a hand-out invitation I picked up over the weekend.

The organization conducting the screening said it was early in the process (IMDB shows it releasing in the UK in November, so this seems about right). There were some specific questions on the form regarding the score (which, though Danny Elfman-lite, didn't seem like a temp track - but this is my first screening of this sort) and everything seemed pretty much in it's place, so I don't know how much tweaking they have left to do.

The story concerns two recently-motherless young British boys (about seven and ten) whose lives are drastically changed when the youngest has a bag of soon-to-be worthless English pounds "drop from heaven" just days before the UK is to convert to the euro. The boy, obsessed with Christian saints and martyrs (many of which appear to him throughout the film, drolly giving advice), feels obligated by God to hand money out to the poor. His brother, aware that the money is a stray bag from the heist of an enormous load of incinerator-bound cash, is determined to successfully spend the money while they've still got the chance.

Being directed by the man who gave us the somewhat similarly-themed SHALLOW GRAVE, I was not prepared for the boy's-eye-view fantasy that MILLIONS delivered. The aforementioned apparitions of the saints, plus a couple of huge stretches of logic and reality, made this seem closer to Tim Burton's BIG FISH than I had expected. It wasn't as cloying (or crappy) as LOVE, ACTUALLY and it did do a terrific job on representing the cookie-cutter developments of the modern UK (without going overly Spielbergian with the metaphor), but it was a little too precious at times. And for a Christmas movie, where in the f*ck was all the snow? I'm not sure where in the UK it is set (it was shot in Liverpool and Manchester) but I always thought it at least got a bit cold there by December.

The acting was quite strong. Both boys were very good - though at times hard to understand (a problem they asked about a lot in the questionnaire), but the younger (IMDB is of no help here) carried the wight of the narrative with great ease. James Nesbitt (BLOODY SUNDAY) as the widower-dad had some really nice moments, especially with his sons. But the villain, looking for his missing bag of loot, was sadly a pretty toothless creation. There were a couple of moments where it looked like the possibility of a threat might develop, but someone wanted to keep this picture very child-friendly, so no hope there.

This isn't an over-produced mess like THE BEACH, but there is something very unexpectedly slick about MILLIONS. If Boyle (or screenwriter Frank Cottrel Boyce) wanted to shoot for the fantastical, something more along the lines of THE BUTCHER BOY would have given the audience something to sink their teeth into. Sadly, what was onscreen skewed directly towards the "like titles" the screening organization was flashing on clip boards while we were in line: CALENDAR GIRLS, NOTTING HILL, CHOCOLAT, THE PRINCESS DIARIES and ABOUT A BOY. Watching it unfold, you know the thing is rolling toward a happy ending, but the make-believe level of happiness it arrives at ended up leaving a "Huh?" with much of the audience around me. Mike Leigh (or even the Danny Boyle I was hoping for) would have ended this thing with the fantasy veneer of sanctimony/self-actualization ripped away, revealing two desperately abused, impoverished boys who are trying to make believe their cardboard-box haven will keep them from freezing to death through the Christmas holiday. And I'd have to say that I would have preferred that to what I got.

If this is something you can use, call me whatever you'd like.

Take it easy.

b