AND IT'S GREAT TO BE ALIVE:

REVIEW: of Millions (Jeffrey Overstreet, 03/11/05, Christianity Today)

A particularly reliable source once said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." When he said this, he was referring to children like Damian.

Damian is the young hero of Millions, and you've never encountered a hero quite like him. Unlike the Bart Simpsons and Malcolms in the middle of most family entertainment, Damian is not a self-interested troublemaker. He's not defiant toward authority. Instead, he's brave, imaginative, charming, unpredictable, and utterly virtuous. He's also painfully naïve, and that's why, in his quest to deliver an unexpected fortune to the needy, he's in a world of danger.

The Unexpected Fortune has been the premise of quite a few comedies—most of them awful. But Millions comes from the hyperactive imagination of genre-leaping director Danny Boyle, and it's wise, meaningful, laugh-out-loud funny, and relentlessly inventive. In fact, it's 2005's first fiction film to deserve the word "fantastic." It's not just a brilliant family film—it's a brilliant film. Given the proper promotion, its contagiously high spirits could turn it into an Amelie-sized international hit. But Millions probably doesn't have what it takes (i.e., sex and violence) to be an opening-weekend blockbuster in America, so it's more likely to build momentum over time, as viewers come back from the theaters to tell their friends about it, wearing ridiculous grins on their faces. [...]

Damian is the lens through which we experience this story, and we fall in love with him. That's largely because young Alex Etel is completely convincing; he perfectly manifests Damian's conflicts and conscience. Damian's virtue and vision stem from his unquestioning belief that God exists and is working everything together for good. He's so open to grace and miracle that he's prone to celebrating the arrival of envelopes that declare "You may already have won 10,000 pounds!"

Damian's faith finds its shape in his preoccupation with the saints, with whom he converses intently when he's alone. Saints don't pop up very often at the movies, and that's odd, considering how central they've been in the history of visual art. Boyle seems thrilled to have them at his beck and call in this film, and their appearances are delightful, small halos spinning like glow-in-the-dark Frisbees. Saints Anne and Nicholas stop by. Saint Peter offers a new interpretation of the loaves and fishes story which, while unorthodox, is a worthwhile lesson. But it's the martyrs of Uganda who make the biggest impression on Damian, giving him a vision for future investments.

With his growing passion for Africa, and a bedroom illuminated by a globe that represents his comprehensive conscience, Damian's bound for a future as a missionary or a humanitarian leader … or at least a U2 fan. [...]

Best of all, Millions refuses to tell us that saving the world is a simple process of good deeds. It instead focuses on the differences between the brothers' worldviews, and how one's perspective can determine the fullness of one's life. Where Anthony's "grownup" disregard for spiritual realities lead directly to his materialism and anxiety, Damian's assumptions enable him to experience sincere joy as he serves others.

MORE:
'Millions' is time well spent (Ty Burr, March 18, 2005, Boston Globe)

''Millions," then, is Boyle's version of one for the kids: visually arresting, seriously whimsical, and suffused with a dreamy yet sad awareness of where life falls short and imagination has to pick up the slack. It's also burdened with an overbusy plot and, less harmfully, a few scary bits.

More than anything else, ''Millions" is about money and about the ways children deal with its promises and threats. To be precise: When roughly 250,000 British pounds literally drops from the sky at their feet, what are brothers Damian (Alex Etel) and Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) to do? Anthony, canny lad, wants to invest in real estate in their Manchester, England, neighborhood. Damian wants to give it away to the poor, whoever they are, since clearly God is responsible for the largesse.

While ''Millions" traffics in more real-life issues than typical Hollywood kiddie fare, Boyle and his screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce have made one concession to classic Disney tradition: Mom is dead before the credits even roll.

Edgy director opts for a 'PG' film (David Sterritt, 3/18/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

Whether or not movies like the melodramatic "Trainspotting" and the zombie yarn "28 Days Later..." are to your liking, you have to admit filmmaker Danny Boyle is full of surprises.

Now he's pulled off his biggest one to date. "Millions," his new picture, is a comedy aimed at family audiences.

It's also a project he was determined to make, because it expresses sides of his personality that most of his films - full of darkness and intrigue - have left beneath the surface. He's an optimist at heart, and decided it was time to create something that reflects this spirit.

Set in the near future, the story centers on two young brothers who stumble on a bag of money - it's crammed with pounds just before Britain switches to the euro. If they don't spend the cash fast, it'll be worthless.

But how should they use it? One boy believes it's literally a gift from God, while the other - a less imaginative, more feet-on-the-ground lad - sees it as a tool for winning friends and influencing people.

Mr. Boyle is delighted to have spun their exploits into a PG picture. But the differences between this and his earlier fare poses "a big problem" in marketing terms, as he told me over lunch at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "Millions" debuted last fall.

"I have a reputation, such as it is, for quite dark films," he said candidly.

Millions:
Unexpected riches abound (ROGER EBERT, Mar 18, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

It isn't the money's fault it got stolen.

That is the reasoning of Anthony Cunningham, who at 9 is more of a realist than his 7-year-old brother, Damian. Therefore it isn't their fault that a bag containing 265,000 British pounds bounced off a train and into Damian's playhouse and is currently stuffed under their bed.

Danny Boyle's "Millions," a family film of limitless imagination and surprising joy, follows the two brothers as they deal with their windfall. They begin by giving some of it away, taking homeless men to Pizza Hut. Damian wants to continue their charity work, but Anthony leans toward investing in property. They have a deadline: In one week the UK will say goodbye to the pound and switch over to the Euro; maybe, thinks Anthony, currency speculation would be the way to go.

Here is a film that exists in that enchanted realm where everything goes right -- not for the characters, for the filmmakers. They take an enormous risk with a film of sophistication and whimsy, about children, money, criminals and saints. Damian collects the saints -- "like baseball cards," says Richard Roeper. He knows all their statistics. He can see them clear as day, and have conversations with them. His favorite is St. Francis of Assisi, but he knows them all: When a group of Africans materializes wearing halos, Damian is ecstatic: "The Ugandan martyrs of 1881!"

The boys' mother has recently died, and Damian asks his saints if they have encountered a St. Maureen. No luck, but then heaven is limitless.

Marvelous 'Millions' a film about faith, real miracles (CATHLEEN FALSANI, March 18, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

Boyle, who was raised Catholic by a devoutly religious Irish mother but who has since abandoned any organized religion, says he was more like Damian than Anthony when he was a boy.

"I was more like the younger boy in a way because I was sort of imaginative," Boyle told me on a recent visit to Chicago. "I remember having conversations like that when I was a kid. . . . No sensible rational barriers that you put up, that people are putting up for you by saying, 'Don't be stupid.' His brother is like that, already a bit careful and a bit canny.

"Everybody changes. . . . There is something clearly between the ages of 8 and 10 where you take those first steps into adult life and there's no going back then. Once you have got a taste for what they perceive we value, they never go back."

Raising big questions about the nature of faith (are you born with it and how do you lose it?) was entirely unintentional, Boyle said.

"The lesson of the film, if there is a lesson -- and there's not meant to be a lesson -- one of the things [Damian's] mom goes on about to him in the last scene, and it's something that my mom went on about to me all the time, is about faith in other people, having that belief in other people, that good can come out of it," he explained.

"And it's more important than iconography and all those kinds of things. It's a gesture toward other people."

'Share ... any gifts you have'

The scene from "Millions" I've been mulling deals with that kind of faith.

Boyle and the screenwriter, Frank Cottrell Boyce, a practicing Catholic ("He has seven children, whereby he proves it," Boyle quipped), retell Jesus' miracle of the loaves and fishes.

They have St. Peter, a gruff, key-jangling bloke from Newcastle with what Boyle describes as a "proper, working-class, industrial accent," tell it to Damian as a bedtime story.

The miracle was not some magical multiplication of sardines and pita bread, St. Peter explains. The real miracle was that people in the crowd who had stashed food away for themselves decided to share it with one another. They were prompted to do so by a young boy who gave Jesus a sack of a few fish and a few pieces of bread.

The miracle was the change of people's selfish hearts.

They were the miracle.

St. Peter asks Damian if he understands what the story means. "Not really," he says, pulling the covers up to his chin.

But he does. In his guilelessness he just doesn't realize his faith has compelled him to do exactly what the cranky saint is talking about, and that he, too, is the miracle.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 18, 2005 7:42 AM