Ri¢hie Ri¢h

Being the richest kid in the world sounds fantastic until you realize your best friend might be a robot and your family portrait requires an entire mountain. That’s the wonderfully ridiculous world of Richie Rich (1994), a movie where unlimited money can buy roller coasters, helicopters, gadgets, and apparently the zoning permits necessary to carve your own faces into a cliff.

Macaulay Culkin plays Richie, the absurdly wealthy but surprisingly normal son of billionaire parents Richard and Regina Rich. He lives in a mansion large enough that getting grounded probably requires GPS coordinates. He has servants, expensive toys, his own personal trainer, and even a McDonald’s inside the house—which may be the most aggressively 1994 definition of wealth imaginable.

There is, however, one luxury Richie doesn’t have: friends.

Yes, underneath the dollar signs, private amusement park rides, and a family fortune that could probably pay off several national debts, Richie Rich is basically about a lonely kid who wants someone to play baseball with.

And honestly? That part works.

Culkin makes Richie likable because he never plays him as a spoiled brat. Richie has everything but doesn’t act like he deserves everything, which prevents the character from becoming completely insufferable. He genuinely wants friends, and when he finally meets some regular kids, the movie gets a little heart to go with its enormous checking account.

Of course, nobody bought a ticket to Richie Rich for a thoughtful examination of childhood loneliness.

We came for the mansion.

Richie’s home is essentially what would happen if you gave a 10-year-old unlimited money and told him to design the coolest house imaginable. There are gadgets everywhere, a roller coaster, ridiculous vehicles, endless rooms, and Mount Richmore—a gigantic mountainside sculpture of the Rich family.

Mount. Richmore.

It is such an impressively stupid display of wealth that you almost have to respect...