M is good for nothing. At least, that’s how his Amah describes him. Unwilling to put an effort into his life, he dropped out of university to make a quick buck as a game caster.
He doesn’t understand the value of honoring one’s family, let alone keeping up rituals of care. When instructed to scatter petals at the cemetery to honor their ancestors, he does it so poorly that his Amah must step in and do it. When she fumbles and injures herself, he barely notices.
When she is wheeled into the hospital, he opts to go home and play on his computer instead. When his mother arrives and tells him the doctors found cancer in Amah’s digestive tract, it’s as if he didn’t hear a thing. To M, his grandmother isn’t important enough to even be labeled an inconvenience.
But when his paternal grandfather dies and leaves the house to his cousin Mui, who served as his primary caretaker, suddenly a plan forms in his mind. He sells his gaming PC, packs his clothes, and moves in with Amah hoping to grow closer to her, close enough that she might favor him, change her will, and give him her home. He is so confident in his plan’s success that he lists the building for sale even before he inherits it.
The premise of writer-director Pat Boonnitipat’s How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is nothing new. Even its trailer reminds us that the film is “inspired by true stories found in every family.” From Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952) to Lulu Wang’s The Farewell (2019), dramas.
