Brewster's Millions (film): Gold from the 80's
There was a time when Richard Pryor was one of the hottest stars in the world and would crank out high-selling comedies every year or so - some were winners, some were losers. This was one of the winners
The story goes like this: Monty Brewster (Richard Pryor) is a minor-league pitcher for a baseball team very few people care about. He makes very little money and lives a simple life. Then one day he ends up in jail with his best pal "Spike" Nolan (John Candy) after getting into a fight at a game and they can't afford bail. They are bailed out by a law firm they have never heard of and Brewster finds out that his great uncle has passed on and left him a bunch of money. However, it isn't as simple as just taking the money.
He is to be given $30 million and he has 30 days to spend it all and at the end he has to have nothing to show for it. He can't own anything or have any assets at all after the 30 days are up. If he succeeds in wasting all the money, he will receive $300 million. He also can not tell anyone about the conditions of having received this money or the "contest" will be forfeit.
I know a lot of people that say that they could do this easily but if you watch the movie, i think they do a pretty good job explaining how hard that can be. There were other conditions - you can't overpay for stuff (like offer $30 million for a sandwich,) you can only give away 5% and you can only gamble 5%. How do you spend 30 million and have nothing to show for it?
Brewster is making real headway in wasting his money only to find out that his pal Spike has been making wise investments on his behalf and is actually gaining money for them. He becomes frustrated in situations that most people would be happy about and since he can't tell anyone what the plan is, they start to butt heads with one another.
I may be spoiling the movie a bit, so i will cut it out now. Most of what i just said is explained really early on in the film so don't stress it. :)
This movie, surprisingly got some bad reviews from critics who said it wasn't funny considering it had Pryor and Candy in it - but i think those guys kinda missed the point. This wasn't meant to be a full on comedy, it was meant to be a drama with comedic elements and if you accept that, the movie is pretty great and it also shows that both of these guys are capable of more than just silliness.
Another awesome classic! I remember all of the times me and my siblings would sit around trying to figure out ways to win this contest.
I think that it would be much, much easier to pull off today than it was in the 80s. Although the situation really does illustrate the fact that wealth attracts more wealth. It's like gravity in that the more mass something has, the more mass it pulls toward itself.
I actually have a friend who got nearly $5 million dollars in a lawsuit back in 2003. I don't know the details, but he was in a massive car accident and became permanently disabled supposedly. I have no idea why because he seemed perfectly normal to me.
Anyway, this dude is a great guy but a bit thick to be fair. He spent the entire amount over the course of 6 months. He bought dozens of guitars and amps. He Held permanent parties where every person who came got their own bottle of Goldschläger. He bought all of the alcohol and paid live bands to entertain. This was 7 days a week, dude. Then he would take everyone (like 50 or 60 people) to Golden Corral and pay for everyone's food. I know, it's golden corral but you have to know the guy. The house that he lived in became known as the Hell House around town. It was a beautiful home that was so destroyed by partying, that it had to be literally demolished when he moved out.
I can't make this shit up, man...
He couldn't cook, but he loved Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. He would go to the store and buy the entire stock filling 2 shopping carts to the top. (He hated shopping, wanted to get it out of the way at once). He hated veggies and cooking, so he removed all of the trays from the fridge, and kept a keg of beer in there.
So I think my friend could have won Brewster's millions! He would have just needed to push a little harder.
PS - this guy now works at CVS in the photo lab
oh that is tragic. I do remember reading somewhere that most of the people who win tens of millions of dollars in the lottery end up dead broke a short time later. There is one story of a guy that actually has won millions in the lottery twice, and he is broke again. It always blows my mind that this can happen because well, i always say that you could easily set up something really simple like a money market account that pays something like 5% fixed interest and well, anyone can live off of a couple hundred thousand a year, right?
Plus everyone always takes the one time payout of significantly less money rather than the other option which is to receive several million a year for 20 years or something like that.
Your pal sounds like he was probably a lot of fun for 6 months but I would be willing to bet that a lot of his entourage abandoned him after the party was over.
I think that it is funny about the Beefaroni and Golden Corral - at least he didn't let the money make him all high and mighty. :)
Oh, yeah.. For as extravagantly as he spent, he was the exact opposite of uppity. In fact, he had to be that way because he was massively into glam rock and super obscure bands which apparently meant that he had to be super underground and unsuccessful in real life. Don't ask me. I think spending all of the money fed into his philosophy of a life of entropy. I just realized that this guy is really hard to explain.
And yes, you are precicely correct. When the money ran out, he had like 3 friends left; me, my brother and his bassist. I told him the whole time to chill out with the money but he wouldn't listen.
Some critic miss what I call intent, sometimes a movie is meant to tell a story and only because it has a little spark of comic event and obviously a comedian protagonists doesn't make it a comedy, it's a brilliant movie by my standard
9/10
Excellent movie
This was remade in tamil and later dubbed in telugu ( South Indian launguages) and was a blockbuster there as well.
I also enjoyed his other movie see no evil and hear no evil
Really this is very great and funny actor.He is best comedian.His action is so funny.He is most popular person in the world.Very interesting trailor of this movie.I really like this movie.Thanks for sharing.
Tremendous movie
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This is a great idea for a movie, and really complicated. It shows that in this movie. Once you figured out what Pryor's character was going to do and made it really predictable. Excluding that, it was pretty funny and Pryor was the absolute best actor to play this role.
Richard Pryor made me laugh so much in this movie. And what a situation!, the character he played had to spend all this money in 30 days. Its an iconic movie from the 80's, that we would never forget hehehehe.