Spend $30,000,000 in 30 days in order to inherit $300,000,000. It's a pretty unlikely and totally ridiculous premise, and for me it resulted in a film that wasn't entirely successful.
I think the main problem with this film is that it didn't focus on the right areas in order to generate humour; the whole premise of Monty Brewster being able to inherit the $300,000,000 is to spend $30,000,000 without telling anyone about the deal. I personally felt that this film would have been much funnier if that would have been the area where it had focused its attention. It would have been much funnier to see everyone trying to find out why Brewster has to spend so much money so quickly and more focus on Brewster struggling to keep it a secret - it seemed odd that no-one seemed to question where the money had come from? It would have also been a lot funnier if we saw Brewster struggling more to spend his money (he seems to manage to spend the money much more easily than I anticipated). Instead, we have 90 minutes of Brewster throwing his money around, buying everyone and everything and that's pretty much it. It's funny at first, but it's a premise that stretches itself rather thin and starts to become a bit tiresome after a while.
Added to this, the film throws in a love triangle that went nowhere and wasn't particularly interesting - this also gave the film a heavy moody feel at times that it simply didn't need. They also had a pointless character who repeated everything that everyone said (thankfully he was only on screen for about 5 minutes, but it was long enough to make me mildly irritated). In many ways, this felt like a complete waste as the idea was a good one for a bit of goofy fun, but unfortunately the writers made it very much a one joke film that failed to exploit other avenues of potential that were most definitely there for the taking.
On a positive note, there were some laughs to be found here and there - the funniest scene in the film was probably the scene where Brewster's uncle is reading his terms of the Will to Brewster. Pryor and Candy are both excellent comedy actors and they were both very good here (although I did think that they both 'overacted' at times). There was some good here, but not enough to justify investing 95 minutes of your life watching this. It's a film that I'd only recommend to die hard fans of either Pryor or Candy.
I think the main problem with this film is that it didn't focus on the right areas in order to generate humour; the whole premise of Monty Brewster being able to inherit the $300,000,000 is to spend $30,000,000 without telling anyone about the deal. I personally felt that this film would have been much funnier if that would have been the area where it had focused its attention. It would have been much funnier to see everyone trying to find out why Brewster has to spend so much money so quickly and more focus on Brewster struggling to keep it a secret - it seemed odd that no-one seemed to question where the money had come from? It would have also been a lot funnier if we saw Brewster struggling more to spend his money (he seems to manage to spend the money much more easily than I anticipated). Instead, we have 90 minutes of Brewster throwing his money around, buying everyone and everything and that's pretty much it. It's funny at first, but it's a premise that stretches itself rather thin and starts to become a bit tiresome after a while.
Added to this, the film throws in a love triangle that went nowhere and wasn't particularly interesting - this also gave the film a heavy moody feel at times that it simply didn't need. They also had a pointless character who repeated everything that everyone said (thankfully he was only on screen for about 5 minutes, but it was long enough to make me mildly irritated). In many ways, this felt like a complete waste as the idea was a good one for a bit of goofy fun, but unfortunately the writers made it very much a one joke film that failed to exploit other avenues of potential that were most definitely there for the taking.
On a positive note, there were some laughs to be found here and there - the funniest scene in the film was probably the scene where Brewster's uncle is reading his terms of the Will to Brewster. Pryor and Candy are both excellent comedy actors and they were both very good here (although I did think that they both 'overacted' at times). There was some good here, but not enough to justify investing 95 minutes of your life watching this. It's a film that I'd only recommend to die hard fans of either Pryor or Candy.