Sunday, April 10, 2005

MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING: Go. See. Millons. Now. Like Matt said.

What an absolutely wonderful fable about belief, goodness, and the disposition of more than £220,000 which seemingly falls from the sky. A children's movie that us adults can truly enjoy, it is sweet without being saccharine, with adorable kids who, surprisingly, never make you want to puke. But when an athletics bag filled with cash crashes into your world and your older brother explains that if dad finds out he'll have to pay 40% of it in taxes ("about all of it!"), what's a kid obsessed with Christian saints supposed to do -- on the eve of the conversion to the Euro, no less?

Yes, it's by the director of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, and the screenwriter did previously pen Hilary and Jackie and 24 Hour Party People, once described as "the first movie structured like a DVD bonus feature." But this movie brilliantly fuses its creators' imaginations with a child's, and the results are remarkable. Boyle employs here the visual style and that once placed a baby on the ceiling of a detoxing junkie's bedroom, and it's just freakin' cool.

As many reviewers have said, this movie deserves to be a holiday season perennial. Watch it now -- with or without kids of your own -- and help make it so.

One trivia note: the older British actor you'll see in the Euro Countdown ads in the movie? Is the voice of The Sorting Hat.

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