I'm fairly certain that anyone who loves film knows that a little over two years ago Irish director Danny Boyle won a slew of Oscars for the film Slumdog Millionaire, a film which was a hit with critics and audiences alike for its tale of an underdog...excuse me, slumdog...hitting the big time. What not as many people may know about is a film that Boyle also did that came out three years earlier, also with the word "Million" in its title: a sweet little comedy titled "Millions."
The title is a little misleading; the poster and marketing of the film suggest that a little boy (Alexander Etel)happens upon millions of pounds, when in fact the total is just under a quarter of a million. All the same, though, when a huge bag of money seems to fall from the sky onto little Damian Cunningham (Etel) while he's playing in his fort made from cardboard boxes, it might as well be millions of pounds sterling. This mysterious delivery is actually courtesy of the Bank of England, which in the film is switching over from pounds to Euros by the end of the year, and is about to burn all of its pounds. A syndicate of thieves all over England are scrambling to seize as many of these soon-to-be-destroyed pounds with the intent of exchanging them for a kingly sum as soon as possible, and one of their schemes involves a single thief flinging bags of money from the train carrying them as it makes its way across the English countryside. One such bag lands right on Damian's fort, destroying it and astonishing him.
Damian, a devout Catholic whose mother recently died and who seems to be a virtual encyclopedia of facts about Catholic saints, many of whom actually visit him throughout the film, believes that the money is a gift from God and believes it should be given to the poor. His brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) has other ideas, though. At Anthony's urging, the boys hide the money from everyone, including their father (James Nesbitt) with each of them spending it as he sees fit, with Anthony building up an entourage and Damian doing God's work. It is ironically Damian who catches more attention as he drops a thousand pounds into a donation bin during a drive for charity, and catches the attention of the woman conducting the drive (Daisy Donovan), and his school principal. Anthony lies to the principal, claiming that he stole the money from the Mormons who live in their community (to whom Damian has also given a considerable amount of money) in order to keep the boys' secret.
However, things get a little dangerous when the thief for whom the bag of money was intended shows up looking for it, with Damian innocently asking if he's a "poor person" and intending to give him money (and telling him that he has lots to give), and with Anthony, being a little bit wiser, throwing the thief off the trail by giving him a huge jar of coins and telling him that this was the "lots" to which Damian referred.
Time is not on the boys' side as the deadline for the switchover draws near, with the thief seemingly getting hotter on their trail and the money simply becoming too difficult to conceal.
All told, this was a sweet little story that has more in common with Pay It Forward, than it does with Slumdog Millionaire, although mercifully it doesn't have the ridiculously contrived ending of the former. While Boyle is about the only truly well-known film maker involved in making this film, all of the actors, especially young Etel and McGibbon, turn in fine performances that do the film proud. The characters were difficult to understand at time due to their thick "Mancunian" accents ("Mancunian" referring to the speech of those hailing from Manchester in Northern England) but considering that this DVD is subtitled it wasn't as big a problem as it would have been for one watching this in movie theaters. The film gets a little preachy at times but it never loses its sweetness. There's also a nice dynamic to the relationship between the two brothers, and while their relationship is not put through the wringer that the brothers in Slumdog undergo it is definitely put to the test in some ways and is all the better for it.
The DVD has decent enough extras like deleted scenes and interviews with the director, cast and crew, but there's nothing that particularly stands out, as DVD extras go. Fortunately, the film is an attraction in and of itself, and definitely something worth checking out for anyone suffering from sequel/remake/reboot/franchise fatigue.
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