A couple of scenes in "Millions" swiftly brought to mind key scenes in earlier films. I've scrolled through numerous comments posted here, but found no references to these "homages".
I presume the director and/or writer knew that audiences would be put in mind of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" when we see the long line of "poor people" waiting patiently to ask the family in "Millions" for financial help. Did they also knowingly reference "Ponette" in creating the scene where the young boy is granted a 5-minute "visit" from his dead mother? This second "homage" is tweaked, though, in having a second person also witness the visitor from beyond the grave.
Overall, I was drawn into the movie until the last third of the film. I could go along with having the boy's imaginative world explicitly portrayed. I can endorse this approach which, I believe, reached an apex in Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures". I didn't have much of a problem with the visitations of the saints. For myself, however, I began to regain disbelief when the very homages I mention above arrived.
Interesting that this thin line between creativity and recreativity would also become the point at which my "belief" in the film was lost.
I presume the director and/or writer knew that audiences would be put in mind of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" when we see the long line of "poor people" waiting patiently to ask the family in "Millions" for financial help. Did they also knowingly reference "Ponette" in creating the scene where the young boy is granted a 5-minute "visit" from his dead mother? This second "homage" is tweaked, though, in having a second person also witness the visitor from beyond the grave.
Overall, I was drawn into the movie until the last third of the film. I could go along with having the boy's imaginative world explicitly portrayed. I can endorse this approach which, I believe, reached an apex in Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures". I didn't have much of a problem with the visitations of the saints. For myself, however, I began to regain disbelief when the very homages I mention above arrived.
Interesting that this thin line between creativity and recreativity would also become the point at which my "belief" in the film was lost.