Age Before Beauty
You know how this ends, but bring your tissues anyway.
How to Make Millions Before Grandma dies
Director: Pat Boonnitipat • Writer: Pat Boonnitipat, Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn
Starring: Putthipong Assaratanakul, Usha Seamkhum, Sarinrat Thomas, Sanya Kunakorn, Pongsatorn Jongwilas, Tontawan Tantivejakul
Thailand • 2hrs 7mins
Opens Hong Kong June 13 • I
Grade: B-
Full disclosure: While I don’t dislike the so-called family drama at the same supernova level as I would enjoy setting 35mm prints of most rom-coms on fire/re-loading the OS without backing up, they’re not really my thing. As an only child of a single parent, that sense of obligation and duty and conflict with extended family was never a going concern. The disinterest is less about story – almost everyone can connect with a well drawn familial situation, from rivalry to illness to estrangement – as it is about the bald-faced sentimental manipulation most family dramas, or melodramas, trade in. Case in point, Thai box office hit How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies | หลานม่า.
The film revolves around wannabe pro gamer M (Putthipong Assaratanakul, or Billkin), a dropout who mooches off his mother Chew (Sarinrat Thomas) and whines about the minor demands she makes of him – like going to see his 80-year-old grandmother Amah (Usha Seamkhum in her first feature). When M finds out Amah’s dying of cancer, he decides to be the good grandson and move in to help her out in her last days. Also? She might just leave her Bangkok house to him, an idea he gets from his cousin Mui (Tontawan Tantivejakul), a nurse with a knack for finding elderly patients to care for from whom she eventually inherits large estates. Ka-ching!
How many square feet you got?
If nothing else writer-director Pat Boonnitipat and co-writer Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn know how to tap the waterworks, and a willingness to accept the film’s heightened emotionalism and transparent attempts to tug at the heartstrings will go a long way towards clicking with the film’s whole vibe; recognisable cultural resonance given the Sino-Thai family at the heart of the story helps too. The action starts with Amah, Chew, M and Amah’s other sons, eldest Kiang (Sanya Kunakorn) and the youngest, loser Soei (Pongsatorn Jongwilas) cleaning the family grave and debating the need for a prime cemetery site. Amah collapses for no reason, and it’s after a quick trip to the ER the kids discover she’s got late-stage cancer. Of course, they start jockeying for position as favourite child while hiding her diagnosis from her – at least until M comes along and spills the beans in an attempt to be the good cop. It’s clear that to varying degrees, each archetype is fixated on money – getting it, keeping it, losing it.
Once M moves into his granny’s house, How to Make Millions begins its slow march to five-tissue territory, using the deepening relationship between Amah and M as its signposts. The gentle “comedy” of the early moments of M getting an earful because he screws up her tea or congee, gives way to slightly more dramatic plot beats, as M calls out Kiang for using his wealth to get Amah’s attention, and Soei hoping she’ll be his lifeboat for gambling debts. Along the way, M mostly wakes up to her value as a person that he’ll miss one day rather than just the deed holder to a valuable asset.
And oh, man, is that march to tear town relentless, enhanced by Jaithep Raroengja’s syrupy and emotionally transparent score. That score, of course, is in service to the increasing tragedy of Amah’s chemo, destitution, an icy meeting with a brother and so on, all of which could dive headfirst into mawkishness if Usha weren’t so engaging to watch. She’s by far the highlight of the film, and turns in a naturalistic performance that’s more bittersweet than heartbreaking. Amah is resigned and wise – she knows exactly what everyone’s up to, M included – and Usha never once allows her to seem helpless or lacking agency. Fair warning: it’s not as funny as trailers make it seem.
She and M have a nice back-and-forth, but by making M consistently dickish the script lets him down, and Putthipong’s just not a strong enough actor to make up the difference. Yes, yes, the point of How to Make Millions is to watch M grow up, overcome his selfish impulses and learn the true value of family connection, but the film comes dangerously close to making him unlikeable and therefore not worth caring about. But that’s nitpicking in a film that’s not meant to be nitpicked; Pat’s debut is a no muss, no fuss, old fashioned redemptive weepie, engineered to make you call your granny and not expect cash for it. On that front How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies works. Just not for me. — DEK