{"id":8963,"date":"2024-11-27T13:03:59","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T18:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8963"},"modified":"2024-11-27T13:03:59","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T18:03:59","slug":"brewsters-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/27\/brewsters-millions\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewster’s Millions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Brewster’s Millions<\/strong> (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Walter Hill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ry Cooder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ric Waite\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 22, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Richard Pryor, John Candy, Lonette McKee, Stephen Collins, Jerry Orbach, Pat Hingle, Tovah Feldshuh, Hume Cronyn, Joe Grifasi, Peter Jason, David White, Jerome Dempsey, David Wohl, Ji-Tu Cumbuka, Milt Kogan, Carmine Caridi, Yakov Smirnoff.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $40.8M (US)\/$45.8M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0It’s a damn shame when so much talent comes together only to create something as utterly mediocre as Brewster’s Millions<\/strong>, a comedy directed by Walter Hill (48 Hrs.) and starring two truly gifted funny men, Richard Pryor (Stir Crazy) and John Candy (Splash). It\u2019s the seventh of eight film adaptations of the 1902 novel by George Barr McCutcheon. I\u2019ve not seen any of the others, but surely they\u2019re better than this weak effort.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Minor league relief pitcher Montgomery Brewster (Pryor) is going nowhere in life unless you count down as a destination. He\u2019s let go by his manager (Orbach, Law & Order) after a bar fight he didn\u2019t start. There\u2019s no way he can make bail and it looks bad for him until a stranger (Grifasi, F\/X) offers to pay it on behalf of a party who wishes to remain anonymous. Monty, thinking he\u2019s a scout for the Yankees, goes to NYC with him only to find out he\u2019s working for a lawyer representing his recently deceased great-uncle (Cronyn, Cocoon). It turns out he\u2019s the sole heir to his fortune. Did I mention the old man was extremely rich?<\/p>\n

\u00a0He stands to inherit $300 million, but there\u2019s a catch. Isn\u2019t there always? In order to claim his inheritance, Monty must spend $30 million in 30 days with nothing to show for it at the end but the shirt on his back. Also, he\u2019s not allowed to tell anybody about this arrangement. If he fails, the money will be divided among several charities by the law firm. OR he can forfeit the big money and take $1 million right there and then. It goes without saying Monty goes for the big money.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The firm assigns young paralegal Angela (McKee, The Cotton Club) to keep track of his expenditures. She doesn\u2019t know about the $30M\/30 day deal and is aghast at his spendthrift ways. She\u2019s engaged to Warren (Collins, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), an ambitious young lawyer at the firm looking to make partner. He gets his chance when a couple of his bosses ask him to make sure Monty fails at the task placed before him. Two things go without saying; (1) Warren is a two-faced rat and (2) Monty and Angela start to fall for each other.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For his part, Monty does go hog wild, hiring employees and paying outrageous salaries for their services. He even hires his best friend Spike (Candy) as his public relations guy. He soon finds out getting rid of $30M isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds. It seems like everything he tries just earns him more money. He\u2019s frustrated and nobody understands why. He keeps trying though. At one point, he throws a lot of money into a mayoral campaign in which he urges voters to vote for \u201cNone of the Above\u201d citing that neither he nor the other two candidates are deserving of the title.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s difficult to say what went wrong with Brewster’s Millions<\/strong>. Simply put, it\u2019s not as funny as it should be given the cast and premise. It\u2019s a screwball comedy without the screwball. There\u2019s no comic energy. It starts out promisingly, but loses momentum before the midway point. A big part of the problem is Hill who never directed a straight-up comedy before. He makes great action movies which are really westerns in disguise. Comedy is clearly not his forte. This movie is L-A-M-E. The comic timing is off. The screenplay by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod (Trading Places) is disappointingly flat. It doesn\u2019t accommodate either star or their comic talents. That\u2019s not to say Pryor and Candy don\u2019t try. They do, but they\u2019re hindered by weak direction and writing. The PG rating doesn\u2019t help either. It limits Pryor who\u2019s famous for profane comedy. At times, you can see he\u2019s making an effort to control himself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I’m not saying Brewster’s Millions<\/strong> is a terrible movie; it’s just a disappointing one. I saw it at a sneak preview and the audience didn’t seem all that impressed with it. It\u2019s amusing when it should be hilarious. Also, it wastes a talented cast that also includes Pat Hingle (Sudden Impact) as a good-guy lawyer, Tovah Feldshuh (Cheaper to Keep Her) as a snotty interior director and Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff as a cab driver hired by Monty to drive his limo. You remember him, his famous catchphrase was \u201cAmerica, what a country!\u201d I\u2019ll grant that the two leads have pretty good chemistry, but it\u2019s nowhere near the level of comedy magic generated by Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the end, the highest praise I can afford Brewster’s Millions<\/strong> is that it\u2019s okay. To its credit, it\u2019s generally good-natured. It\u2019s not mean-spirited in any way. It doesn\u2019t try to comment on greater societal issues like poverty and homelessness either. Hill keeps things light. That doesn\u2019t change my opinion. I can\u2019t recommend it, but I can\u2019t condemn it either. Hell, I can barely remember it.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brewster’s Millions (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Walter Hill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ry Cooder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ric Waite\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 22, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Richard Pryor, John Candy, Lonette McKee, Stephen Collins, Jerry Orbach, Pat Hingle, Tovah Feldshuh, Hume Cronyn, Joe Grifasi, Peter Jason, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Brewsters-Millions-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8963"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9305,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8963\/revisions\/9305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}