Plot: What’s it about?
This is a bad movie. Truth that no matter how good or experienced your cast is, if the script doesn’t work – neither will the movie. Such is the case with “Milk Money”, a story about as believable as the Easter Bunny. I’m going to outline the plot, tell why it doesn’t work and see what, if any, redeeming value this movie has. Ok, here we go…Three kids, all sons of Tom Wheeler (Ed Harris) decide they want to see a naked woman. Evidently in the world of 1994 with cable and even at that time, a limited internet, they haven’t seen a topless woman. Ok, I think I might be able to buy that. So as opposed to getting a few bucks together and buying a Playboy, they ride their bikes to the local city and hire a hooker (Melanie Griffith). Now hooker’s usually only do one thing, evidently not this one. She shows them what they want to see and before long she is living in the treehouse masquerading as a tutor. A bit far-fetched, but ok…now the thing that really gets me is that the father is falling for her all the while her pimp (Malcolm McDowell) is roving through the streets looking for “V” (that’s Melanie Griffith’s character). Make sense?
Now as to what the people were thinking when this movie came out…I don’t know. The movie jumps all over the place, with situations and things that are barely believable. Though Griffith has only interested me for one reason, her body, the filmmakers evidently thought they could turn this into some sort of “Pretty Woman” (i.e. the hooker with the heart of gold). Uh…no. Naturally Harris has gone onto bigger and better projects and McDowell has had share of finer films as well. This leaves us with Melanie Griffith and whenever I think of her (which is not often) I’m reminded of Victoria Jackson’s song on an episode of “Saturday Night Live” entitled ‘I am not a bimbo’. Take that how you will. There’s not anything else to say except that this movie is just not fun to watch or even think of. I’m sure it’s something that the members of the cast wish they could erase off their resume, but we can’t change the past. What we can do, though, is not watch this movie. Sorry Paramount, but some movies are worth the treatment that you give them (no features, just a 16:9 transfer and a 5.1 soundtrack) and this is one perfect example. To be avoided at all costs.
Video: How does it look?
While the 1.85:1 image is enhanced for widescreen TV’s, it suffers from some artifacting. The picture is clear in the sense that most scenes look very good, it’s good to see a lower budget movie like this getting the benefit of a new anamophic transfer. While the black levels are right on, there are several indoor scenes that suffer from the artifacting, and that’s a turn off. Overall, it’s really not that bad of a picture, we’ve just been subjected to so many wonderful-looking pictures that we hold everything else up to a higher standard. One of the only drawbacks of DVD I guess…
Audio: How does it sound?
As with most of Paramount’s catalog titles, this has been re-mastered in Dolby Digital 5.1. I don’t think I ever heard the surrounds activate, and if they did, I guess I missed it. This is a very dialogue-driven movie and sound obviously isn’t the most important part of the film. There is no distortion to the dialogue at all, and at times the front speakers have some of the score in them. I wasn’t expecting much which is good, because you don’t get much. This isn’t a fault of the Dolby Digital soundtrack, though, it’s just the way the movie was supposed to sound.
Supplements: What are the extras?
No supplements have been included.
