Blank Check Review (1994)
Director: Rupert Wainwright
Writer: Blake Snyder, Colby Carr
Starring: Brian Bonsall, Karen Duffy, Miguel Ferrer, Tone Loc, James Rebhorn, Michael Lerner
Release Date: February 11, 1994
Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes

It’s Throwback Thursday, and this week I’m looking back on one of my childhood favorite films that I recently rewatched for the first time in probably 25 years.

However, between late 1994 and 1996, I watched Blank Check probably twenty or thirty times. I loved this movie as a kid. It sat right there with First Kid, Rookie of the Year, House Guest, Jingle All the Way, Little Big League and The Sandlot. Going back to it as an adult is a different experience, and I think that’s probably to be expected. It doesn’t quite hold up as well as some of the aforementioned films do, but still decent.

The setup is classic wish fulfillment for the early teen and under crowd. Preston Waters (Brian Bonsall) is an eleven-year-old kid whose dad is comically cheap, whose brothers treat his room like an office, and who generally gets no respect from anyone in his orbit. When a money laundering criminal named Quigley (Miguel Ferrer) runs over his bike in a bank parking lot and hands him a signed blank check to get him out of the way fast, Preston does what any kid with minimal moral guardrails would do; he fills it out for a million dollars, runs it through a corrupt bank president, and proceeds to spend it on behalf of a fictional guy he made up on his Mac. He buys a sweet castle house, go-kart track, water slide, limo service, and a shit ton of ice cream. The full works.

For a ten-year-old watching this in 1995, that premise was gold. Who among us didn’t spend five minutes as a kid daydreaming about what we would buy with a million dollars? The film speaks directly to that fantasy, and for its target audience, it works perfectly well. The pacing moves fast enough to keep kids engaged, and the spending montages hit the exact right notes of aspirational ridiculousness.

As an adult, the seams show a little more. The plot logic doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. Kid me didn’t think twice, but of all the absurdity in this, the idea of an eleven-year-old carrying, let alone running with a backpack with $1 million in it, is ridiculous. That’s like a couple of hundred pounds since it was in tens, not to mention it wouldn’t fit in his backpack anyway. The whole thing has the feel of a Disney production that was clearly chasing the Home Alone and Richie Rich formula rather than trying to carve out its own identity. That is fine for what it is, but it is noticeable more so now than it was back then for me.

What actually holds up is Tone Loc as Juice, one of Quigley’s associates. He is the best thing in the movie. Easygoing, soft spoken, and genuinely funny in a deadpan way that goes completely against type for a heavyset criminal sidekick, but was par for the course for him back during this time. Every scene he is in is better because of him. Miguel Ferrer as Quigley does reliable work as the villain, and Rick Ducommun was just the coolest dude as Henry the chauffeur. Karen Duffy as FBI agent Shay Stanley is, if I’m being completely honest, the main reason ten-year-old me watched the VHS tape as many times as I did. The fountain scene in particular, good Lord. I thought Karen was the hottest in this (and Dumb and Dumber the same year, total smokeshow for young me).

Unfortunately, this film has a bit of controversy around it today because of course it does. The film ends with Shay kissing Preston on the lips and telling him she will check in on him when he is six years older. Shay is a grown woman in her early 30s. Preston is eleven. The movie plays this completely straight as a sweet romantic moment. And to me, it is. I see it more as Shay easily letting down Preston and giving him a moment. There’s nothing sexual about it, yet by the way some folks whine about it online, you’d think the film was promoting pedophilia. Give me a break. Watching this at ten and eleven, I was thinking “lucky bastard,” but there’s nothing sexual about the kiss.

Blank Check is a decent time capsule of mid-nineties Disney family filmmaking. Kid me loved it unreservedly. Adult me can see what kid me was responding to and still find some of it charming while acknowledging that other parts have aged about as well as a cartoon anvil. Duffy is still hot in it to me, and Tone Loc is still as funny as ever in it.

Blank Check gets a two out of five: DECENT.