A remake and update of the 1945 farce, complete with commensurate inflation: where the earlier hero had to unburden himself of a million dollars in two months, if he was to collect the bigger inheritance, the current figures are thirty million in a month. The central plot problem -- how to spend the money without acquiring any assets, or destroying anything of value, or donating more than five percent to charity -- is the sort of thing to engage the viewer's imaginative participation, provided he is able to memorize the head-spinning recitation of conditions, caveats, illustrative examples, and so forth. But the central solution to the problem -- throwing it away on a New York City mayoral campaign -- is utterly disengaging, no matter how great an appeal is made to popular sentimentality: all politicians are corrupt, etc. We would hardly have expected a Walter Hill movie to be funny (the Rick Moranis character in Streets of Fire was the funnier for being unexpected), but we might have expected it to be something. Well-made, for one thing. Frenzy, however, is no substitute for energy, and a hard-driving rock score (by Ry Cooder) is no substitute for pace. Richard Pryor and John Candy, who seem to have peculiarly few chances despite being continually on screen, come off as ingratiating rather than actually amusing: the comic equivalent of a drama's being merely "interesting." (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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