Review | How to Make Millions before Grandma Dies movie review: family at odds in Thai blockbuster
- Audiences will laugh and cry at this story of a terminally ill grandmother and her predatory family trying to get their hands on her house
4/5 stars
Already causing tear-stained hysteria in cinemas across Southeast Asia, How to Make Millions before Grandma Dies is a blockbuster Thai tear-jerker from television director Pat Boonnitipat, about a Chinese-Thai family of predatory relatives who begin circling their ageing Amah after she is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Pop idol and My Ambulance star Putthipong Assaratanakul, better known by the nickname Billkin, plays the college dropout who volunteers to move in with his grandmother in the hopes of becoming the primary beneficiary of her will.
It is first-time actress Usha Seamkhum who steals the show, however, as the septuagenarian matriarch determined not to go down without a fight.
Inspired by his cousin (Tontawan Tantivejakul), who inherited a small fortune when her grandfather died, M (Billkin) becomes Amah’s primary carer, despite her maintaining an active daily routine as best she can.
M’s decision immediately makes his mother and her siblings suspicious, motivating them to reinsert themselves in their mother’s life for the first time in years. Initially resistant, Amah slowly warms to her grandson’s company, especially as her condition worsens.
