How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is rich with great performances and sharp writing

Presumably, a spiritual sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and How to Marry a Millionaire, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies begins with its protagonist, M (Putthipong "Billkin" Assaratanakul), spending his days as a gaming streamer. Glued to his phone and desktop, college dropout M is stuck in a rut. He sees no easy way to get moolah in this day and age. The lack of opportunities has inspired listlessness in his soul. However, this was before he realized his cousin Mui (Tontawan "Tu" Tantivejakul) works as a caretaker for old dying people.

These gigs aren’t pretty, but Mui’s so passionate about tending to her patients that she often reaps the rewards when their wills are read. This gives M an idea. Now that his grandma, Mengju (Usha "Taew" Seamkhum), is officially suffering from late-stage colon cancer, she's going to need somebody to take care of her. The previously persistently absent M suddenly inserts himself into every facet of Mengju's life. The feisty Mengju is immediately suspicious of M and starts resisting his help at every turn. However, the pair might just need each other more than they realize. M's get-rich-quick scheme gradually spirals into something more meaningful.

Screenwriters Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn and Pat Boonnitipat (the latter of whom also directs) hinge on How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies on a deeply selfish and "unlikeable" character impulse. The eye-catching title alone suggests exploitation, not emotional catharsis! Other weaker movies would convolute their screenplays with endless subplots or backstories to soften M's monetary motivations. Thiptinnakorn and Boonnitipat, meanwhile, just dive head-first into this storyline with confident frankness. That lack of self-consciousness is already a deeply engaging bedrock to build a story on.

This candor informs darkly humorous cynical moments like Mui offering M advice on how he can “rack up your score” when it comes to getting on the good side of dying elderly folks. Such bursts of grim comedy and narrative succinctness (there’s no beating around the bush about M’s motivations) are incredibly welcome. This narrative approach allows How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies to explore complicated familial dynamics with a similar level of bluntness. At one point, Mui notes to M that newer members of a family don’t stand a chance of getting affection from folks like Mengju. Competition from older relatives, like their parents, is just too stiff. “They’ve been loved long before we came along,” Mui sighs before immediately returning to nonchalant conversation.

It's a line puncturing the idea of “I love all my kids/grandkids equally” we all hear our entire lives. How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies doesn’t just make no bones about M’s motivation for helping his elderly relative. It also refuses to flinch from depicting how messy familial dynamics are. The people you’re permanently latched to through blood can also drive you into the greatest emotional pits. It’s one thing hearing your parents or grandparents say they love you. It’s another to feel like you’re getting proper affection or care.

This is territory How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies deftly explores sometimes through bleakly amusing moments like Mengju refusing to deny that she “ranks” her descendants. Other times, this raw terrain is conveyed through more heartbreaking circumstances, like Mengju and M's mom, Chew (Sarinrat "Jear" Thomas), frayed relationship. Families are messy and it’s always a welcome sight to see movies accurately reflecting that. How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies does so with finesse. Best of all, that quality helps make the increasingly intimate dynamic between Mengju and M extra moving.

Even in a sea of familial turmoil, a bond begins to form between the last two relatives that should deeply connect. This arc nicely manifests within Assaratanakul's subtly detailed lead performance. Twenty-something slackers (the kind that dominated American "man-child" comedies in the 2000s) can sometimes be insufferable. Assaratanakul's M, meanwhile, starts Before Grandma Dies a recognizably flawed creation but not a repellant soul. His shortcomings are recognizable and even relatable, not arch depictions of caricatured debauchery. As the story progresses, Assaratanakul commendably keeps M recognizably himself even as he grows as a person. That slacker obsessed with gaming at the start of the runtime still flickers throughout his entire performance.

The real scene-stealer actor of How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, though is Usha "Taew" Seamkhum. Boonnitipat wisely gives her a brief montage early in the runtime to show Mengju's personal life divorced from M and her other relatives. Just in depicting Mengju watering her plants, Seamkhum exudes such effortless authenticity. There’s a realism to her physicality that makes you immediately emotionally latch onto this woman. From there, this performer depicts her character’s feistiness (Mengju’s chastising to M over getting the wrong kind of fish is priceless) and brutal vulnerability with impressive grace. Seamkhum executes the latter element with such quiet rawness. Lines like “I’m about to die, aren’t I?” cut to the soul thanks to Seamkhum’s devastatingly restrained line deliveries.

These richly detailed How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies aspects occasionally clash with its more traditional melodrama movie elements. A precocious youngster, Rainbow (Himawari Tajiri), exists to spout off very pat lines. Jaithep Raroengjai's score, meanwhile, incorporates intrusive musical touches that sometimes distractingly conflicting with subtler performances. More exquisite is Boonyanuch Kraithong's cinematography. He and Boonnitipat especially excel in lending Before Grandma Dies deeply striking instances of blocking.

Most impressive in this department is the visual symmetry between the position of M in two separate shots. At the start of the movie, M, glued to his phone, is framed right in the foreground of a shot depicting his family members tending to a grave. It’s a choice that immediately solidifies how he’s aloof from his family. The closeness to the camera (which forces him to occupy most of the frame) also suggests how M is only thinking of himself.

Later, another wide shot features M once again detached from his family in an interior space. This time, though, he’s in the deep background of the frame. He’s once again disconnected from his family, but this time for more selfless reasons. His increased tendency to think of others informs why he's no longer in the foreground. He doesn’t need to be the center of the frame anymore. M’s character arc's crystallized just in the visual variations between these shots.

The symmetry there is a blink-and-miss-it detail. However, it epitomizes the thoughtfulness going into the imagery of How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies. Such consideration informs this sharp script and deeply idiosyncratic performances. No wonder the motion picture earns all the tears it wrings out of viewers before the credits begin rolling. Granted, it would've been cool for the film to feature some more connections to the How to Lose Friends & Alienate People Universe, but you can't have it all.