brewster's millions

The essence of criticism is jealousy. If those who can't do, teach, those who also cannot teach, preach. And that's what I'm doing here, and here, and here. And the other half of criticism is hope. We can make something beautiful. You dissappoint me. Your 260 million dollar picture could have saved Africa.

When Brewster, a failing minor-league pitcher whose fifteen minutes are long used up, gets tapped on the shoulder by a scruff who looks like a con, everyone's thinking they know where this film is going. Examinations of greed, sports team melodrama, women who don't love him. Nope. Brewster has inherited 300 million dollars. But, like all of God's children, the man must overcome hurdles, and pass the difficult tests set out by the omniscient. Here's the hurdle: In order to inherit the full 300 mil., Brewster must spend 30 million dollars in 30 days.

If you haven't seen this film, you've seen its imitations:
1. Xanadu's depiction in C.K.
2. The spending scenes in Disney's Blank Check
3. The Addams Family Vault
4. Cruella DeVille's garage
5. Arthur

Classically, Arthur is the picture I point to, as a critic, that contains a rare quality in cinema that I actively seek out. It is a picture about a rich man looking for true love, that openly contains no plot point on which the protagonist would actually LOSE something. I seek the holy grail, the kind of movie where absolutely nothing bad will happen, a movie scrubbed of all antagonists, a movie which begins as a cinderella story and has no roadblocks to a pure happiness. There is no "it's academic"esque face-off scene, no teams that showdown for a final duel, there is no love interest that starts with a rejection, no sallow-faced fop hiding behind his office chair. There are no gangs, no fists, no pain in this world that isn't erased in minute ten. Instead, Brewster buys people lunch. He plays baseball with John Candy in his Plaza suite. He rents tuxes and runs for mayor.

It makes me jealous, and it makes me hope. It drives me up the wall and buys me out.