FORTUNE HUNTERS/ THE MILLION DOLLAR KID

US, 2000, 91 minutes, Colour.
Richard Thomas, Maureen Mc Cormick, C. Thomas Howell, Corey Feldman, Alison Lohman, Andrew Sandler, Ron Colson, Neil Mandt, Randy Travis, Estelle Getty, Kaye Ballard, Clint Howard, Mark Metcalf.
Directed by Neil Mandt.

Fortune Hunters is an American-style family entertainment – about a family and a lottery ticket and the need to regain it. To appeal to the family audience, it was retitled The Million Dollar Kid.

The Fortune Family where father, Richard Thomas, is an upright somewhat stern type, dedicated to his work, and a waste not want not attitude, where mother, Maureen McCormick?, loves her husband but feels a need for some kind of relaxation, where the older daughter, Alison Lohman, is a starstruck teenager, feeling she is affirmed by a bandleader and wanting to be in his band, while the younger son, Andrew Sandler, has a thing about money, about gambling and speculation, and a hard, shrewd sense of reality.

The son takes the family heirloom, the first dollar made by their industrious grandfather, and buys a ticket in the lottery with his significant age numbers. Father gives lectures about not needing lotteries…

A week later, the numbers come up, father has thrown the ticket in the rubbish, has to pursue the rubbish man to forage the tickets – and, on his way to the lottery office, he covets a car and listens to the spiel of the salesman, Corey Feldman. He leaves the ticket in the car by mistake, a new customer coming in for the ride, trying to recover the ticket, the customer taking it, it finding its way to a tray for a delivery service. Pursuit, the car running out of petrol because of father’s strictness, the visit to the delivery service and tracking down where the parcel might have gone.

Since there are four delivery places, each of the family goes to one – although it is father, in the first visit, who tracks down the ticket, is pursued by the salesman and his customer, causes mayhem in a garden business, get into all kinds of tangles, is arrested by the police as a terrorist, is bailed out by the salesman – only for further struggles.

Mother goes to a library where she meets fashion model, Valentino, C. Thomas Howell who takes a shine to her and she responds momentarily to a vision of romance. The daughter goes to a nursing home where she encounters a cranky old lady, Kaye Ballard, and makes friends with her. The son goes to Parish Hall, meets an elderly nun, Estelle Getty, goes to the bingo hall, has great success, but loses and realises the happiness of those who win.

There are further shenanigans when the pursuers all conspire to watch the family, all wearing sombreros – and the daughter then rashly gives the ticket to the musician, promising to buy him equipment. the action transfers to the lottery building, false information about which floor the office is on, the client having the ticket, the family having extra envelopes to substitute for the real thing – and the businessman taking the son and threatening him, with all the envelopes blowing over the building. Fortunately, for a happy ending, the main envelope sticks to a railing and is recovered – and the family then go on holiday to Monte Carlo, with the old lady from the nursing home who has helped them curse their pursuers, as has the nun in threatening them with hell!

Light and easy entertainment with a touch of moralising!