Pat Boonnitipat’s film shows that a though a mother’s love might be unconditional, you really have to work for your grandmother’s.
“The rice grains have become cooked rice.”
The way children treat their parents has been the subject of a great many writers, philosophers and irked mothers wondering why you haven’t called yet. Plato mentioned it, and Yasujiro Ozu broke approximately everyone’s hearts with the release of Tokyo Story. The concept has innate conflict: parents raise their children to be strong, independent and successful, to leave the nest and raise their own families. Buit it’s also the child’s responsibility to look after their parents in their twilight years.
This conflict is at the heart of the drama in Pat Boonnitipat’s How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, a film whose title will be shortened from now on.
M (Putthipong “Billkin” Assaratanakul) is a young slacker, living with his mother and trying desperately to become a professional game streamer. He wants to strike it rich, but doesn’t see the value of hard work. After an elderly relative dies, he learns that his cousin Mui (Tontawan “Tu” Tantivejakul) has received his house and most of his money as she was the only one who properly spent time and looked after him in his final days. He discovers this was all part of her plan, one she does often, so takes her advice on how to jump to the front of the inheritance line with his grandmother Mengju (Usha “Taew” Seamkhum), who has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Her children are all too busy living their lives to look after her, so M sees a prime opportunity to swoop in and, with the time offered to him as professional slacker, get in good with the grandma.
From there, anyone who’s ever seen a movie before will see where it’s going. M learns to love his grandmother and not treat her as an asset, perhaps there’ll be a third act bit of drama when she discovers the initial ruse, and so on. Millions is a film that doesn’t try to surprise us, it’s trying to appeal to our sense of love for family, and tug at heart strings. And it achieves this really well. So well that it was able to surprise everyone in Thailand, whose box offices are usually dominated by action films, horrors and comedies.
The appeal comes from the universality of it. Right from the beginning we see how little time Mengju’s children have for her. Her eldest son (Sanya Kunakorn) is busy with work and with his wife who he keeps apart from the rest of the family, her youngest son (Pongsatorn Jongwilas) is always in gambling debt and needs bailing out, and M’s mother (Sarinrat “Jear” Thomas) is just busy balancing single motherhood and everything else. Before the film gets to the sappy, feel-good stuff it offers up a halfway decent argument: is M worse for spending time with his grandma, if it’s for monetary gain? Her kids can’t even muster that.
But it doesn’t like to languish too much with that, and keeps its focus where it’s strongest: in this developing and extremely sweet relationship between M and Mengju. Both actors are wonderful in the roles, especially Usha Seamkhum who, at 78 years old, had never had an acting role before. Astoundingly, she knocks it out of the park and plays her character with a perfect balance of stubbornness, heart and humour.
Don’t let the English title fool you. It doesn’t work in the film’s favour at all. It has the ring of a goofy heist film, loaded with shenanigans and schemes to exploit a grandmother. None of this is true. While the story does centre on the scheme, it’s not exactly the point. Millions is a tender, gentle movie that celebrate the closeness of family and the support they should give one another. By its bittersweet ending, there will be few dry eyes in the house and definitely some people scrambling to call home.
Verdict: Realistic writing is made all the more powerful thanks to a strong cast, and How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is the more heartwarming for it.
Overall entertainment: 8/10
Violence: 0/10
Sex: I gotta subcribe to Mui’s OnlyFans
Gravestone etiquette: Duck butts facing out
Dreams: You gotta start small, M, 4 viewers isn’t nothing!
How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)
Also known as: Lahn Mah
Thai
Director: Pat Boonnitipat
Writers: Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn, Pat Boonnitipat
CAST
Putthipong “Billkin” Assaratanakul – M
Usha “Taew” Seamkhum – Mengju Saejiu
Sarinrat “Jear” Thomas – Sew
Sanya “Duu” Kunakorn – Kiang
Pongsatorn “Phuak” Jongwilas – Soei
Tontawan “Tu” Tantivejakul – Mui
Duangporn Oapirat – Pinn
Himawari Tajiri – Rainbow, Kiang and Pinn’s daughter.
The Asian Cinema Critic 