How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

There are things in life more important than money, but sometimes we lose sight of that, unwittingly allowing our perspectives to become seriously skewed. Unfortunately, this usually happens most often when family-related considerations are involved. And those flawed perceptions, in turn, can become even further distorted when money is tied up with those familial matters, particularly when inheritance concerns loom. Such is the case for a Chinese-Thai family facing the prospects of what will happen to the assets of its terminally ill matriarch (Usha Seamkhum) who has recently been diagnosed with Stage IV intestinal cancer. Several relatives vie for control of her money and property, but the most ambitious among them is her financially strapped grandson (Putthipong Assaratanakul), who suddenly and miraculously manages to shed his generally indifferent attitude toward her and eagerly volunteers to step up as her full-time caretaker, all in hopes that this generous gesture will translate into a sizable windfall upon her passing. However, even though Grandma may be a bit old-fashioned in some of her thinking and outlooks, she’s no naïve dullard, either, quickly recognizing this shift as the transparent move that it is. And she’s determined to have her way about this scenario, using it as an opportunity to not only get her needs met, but also to give her often-lost grandson valuable lessons in tough love and finding much-needed direction in life. So how will this unfold? Will these allegedly altruistic efforts ring true? Moreover, can they be carried out without undue interference from other relatives, most notably his two uncles (Sanya Kunakorn, Pongsatorn Jongwilas), who each have self-serving agendas of their own? And how will Grandma respond to these diverse family dynamics and a host of unforeseen developments that emerge at a time when her health is failing fast? Writer-director Pat Boonnitipat’s debut feature represents an impressive big screen premiere, one that’...

Typically recalcitrant teen “M” (Putthipong Assaratanakul) is puzzled by the behaviour of his cousin “Mui” (Tontawan Tantivejakul) as she meticulously cares for a bedridden, elderly, gentleman. Puzzled, that is, until he dies and leaves her his large home instead of to his children. Almost simultaneously, he goes to visit an ancestral tomb with his own family only for his grandma (Usha Seamkhum) to take a tumble down the mound and hurt her ankle. A routine trip to the hospital delivers some bad news for the family as they discover that she has stage 4 cancer and perhaps just a year to live. Galvanised by the experience of “Mui” and conscious that his own gaming business isn’t exactly setting the cassia on fire, he starts to pay a great deal more attention to this elderly but independently minded lady, in the hope that he might jump up the inheritance ladder ahead of his own mother and her two brothers. One uncle “Soei” (Pongsatorn Jongwilas) is a bit of a thieving wastrel; the other “Kiang” (Sanya Kunakorn) is a successful man living with his wife and young daughter and then there’s his own mum “Sew” (Jear Sarinrat Thomas) who works shifts to keep her and her idler son in reasonable style. Needless to say, “Amah” didn’t come up the river on the last lotus blossom and so is sceptical about her grandson’s newfound familial devotions, but as they share her small (but apparently quite valuable) home, we see their relationship evolve from the obviously venal and suspicious to the more obviously loving. The plot itself does follow some fairly predictable lines, but it’s the two principal characterisations that really work here. The young “M” actually appears to mature in front of us thanks to a solid and often quite humorous performance whilst the wily and spirited grandmother has to face her own mortality and review her own life - often via the disappointing conduits of her children, her grandson and her estranged and wealthy brother. In some ways it reminded me of “Toky...