In an interview with National Review, Craig Good, the senior artist at Pixar, replied when asked about the reason for Pixar's consistent success, "We don't make movies for kids. We make movies for adults and then just make sure there's nothing in them that the little ones shouldn't see."
By that standard, "Millions" is a Pixar product. With this film, director Danny Boyle -- best known for the zombie thriller "28 Days Later" and the violent cult classic 'Trainspotting" -- has achieved something remarkable. The film is devoid of the excess cynicism that plagues adult dramas and the faux sentimentality of today's "children's features," yet it still manages to remain emotionally affecting and thoroughly entertaining. In fact, "Millions" is one of the most delightfully imaginative family features in years.
Seven-year-old Damian (Alexander Nathan Etel) and nine-year-old Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon) move into a newly built housing community with their father (James Nesbitt) after their mother passes away. Damian is a do-gooder with an encyclopedic knowledge of Christian saints who receives regular "visits" from the likes of St. Nick, St. Peter and St. Clair of Assisi (the patron saint of television, no less). These saints, who appear to him in various circumstances, act as mentors and encourage him to help those less fortunate than he is.
This is seemingly made simpler when a large bag of money -- 229,000 pounds, to be exact -- falls out of the sky and into Damian's lap. Damian thinks it's a gift from God that must be distributed to the "poor." However, the more pragmatic Anthony, once informed of the windfall, wants to invest in real estate and use the money as a ladder to popularity in school. Yet they are faced with a unique predicament: they must spend or convert the money within the next few days before Britain converts to the Euro and all pound notes become worthless. Unlike the dime-a-dozen dramas where men chase after money, this film is about two boys who try to chase it away.
Damian, acting on his generous instincts, seeks out the destitute and tries to solve their problems with money, making impromptu donations to those he deems needy. He has an idealized conception of "the poor." He cannot quite pinpoint who they are, but that doesn't stop him from asking strangers if they need cash anyway. One such stranger is a shadowy robber (Christopher Fulford) who wants to reclaim the lost bag of money. His presence suffuses the scenes with a certain menace, with the film taking on a thriller-like quality in the third act.
Anthony is the philosophical counterweight to St. Damian. As a budding economist, his knowledge of interest rates, equity and real estate investment is astounding, but his compassionate side is lacking. He argues for fiscal responsibility and comes up with clever strategies that surprise even his father, like when he suggests converting pounds to dollars instead of Euros and then converting back when the dollar gains on the currency. Anthony's capitalism isn't condemned; rather, it is recognized as a necessary component of the world we live in.
Boyle has already proven himself as a versatile visual artist, and he uses computer graphics to effectively create a bridge between Damian's fantasies and reality, in order to give us a boy's perspective on what transpires in the grown-up world. In a young boy's eyes, the world is an amalgam of reality and whimsy, since everyone's childhood reminiscences have a magical aura to them. Boyle succeeds in conveying a sense of enchantment while making sure never to veer into the excessively fanciful.
Prior to "Millions," Boyle's closest experience with child actors involved dead babies crawling on the ceiling. Therefore, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that he extracts fantastic performances from both of his lead actors. Etel is particularly impressive, as his freckle-faced smile, soulful eyes and quiet charm carry the film. It's a focused performance; he does not go for the "cuteness" factor, instead displaying a genuine interest in his undertakings and a wide-eyed curiosity toward a world he does not understand.
This is a Christian film in the truest sense of the word. Unlike a certain savage exercise in gore last year, "Millions" is spiritual without hitting the audience over the head with religion. Damian venerates Catholic saints, but his allegiance is to the universal message of goodness and charity that forms the bedrock of Christ's doctrine, not to the label of Christianity itself. At a time when spirituality has become associated with narrow religious agenda, it is refreshing to witness a celebration of secular humanism without the trappings of theology.
The ending could be considered a bit of a stretch, and it may actually turn off some viewers. However, this shouldn't detract from the overall experience. "Millions" is, in short, one of the year's best films. Don't miss it.
