Blank Check

Directed by Rupert Wainwright, Blank Check follows Brian Bonsall’s Preston Waters as he finds himself in possession of a million dollars after a criminal (Miguel Ferrer’s Quigley) hands him the title document. It’s a fairly appealing premise that is, at the outset, employed to affable, entertaining effect by Wainwright, as the filmmaker, armed with Blake Snyder and Colby Carr’s screenplay, delivers an easygoing endeavor that benefits from Bill Pope’s snappy visuals and a series of entertaining periphery performances – with the movie elevated considerably by the efforts of agreeable periphery players like James Rebhorn, Tone Lōc, and Michael Lerner. (Ferrer’s scenery-chewing turn as the larger-than-life villain remains an obvious highlight, to be sure.) There’s little doubt, then, that Blank Check‘s growing emphasis on decidedly unappealing elements, including a series of tedious mid-movie montages, ensures that it slowly-but-surely begins to demonstrably wear out its welcome, and it does, as a result, become awfully difficult to work up any real interest in or enthusiasm for the central character’s increasingly far-from-sympathetic exploits – which, when coupled with a frenetic, Home Alone-inspired climax, ultimately does cement the movie’s place as a hit-and-miss comedy that is, in the end, more miss than hit.

** out of ****