Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Blank Check
While this column has focused on a lot of movies that are indisputable classics, we’ve also had to deal with some real stinkers. However, it’s been a while since we’ve had a movie as completely misguided and utterly dire as Blank Check. Released in 1994, this little-loved comedy makes so many wrong choices, you really have to wonder how it even got made in the first place.
The movie was written by Blake Snyder and Colby Carr. Carr’s screenwriting career appears to be limited to this one film but Snyder had been a writer on the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated. In 1992, he broke into the movies with Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, a film Sylvester Stallone later called the worst film of his career (and let’s face it, it has some competition). Snyder later wrote Save The Cat!, a best-selling screenwriter’s guide that boils Hollywood story structure down to a basic formula. The book received some criticism for being overly simplistic but, for better or worse, Snyder’s formula is still widely used in the industry. Blake Snyder died in 2009 at the age of 51 but Save The Cat! remains in print to this day.
Blank Check marked the feature debut of director Rupert Wainwright, a former actor who had become a prolific, award-winning director of music videos and commercials. He’d worked a lot with MC Hammer, getting a lot of MTV play with videos for songs like “U Can’t Touch This” and “Pray”. Blank Check remains his only Disney credit to date. He’d later pivot to horror, directing Stigmata and the remake of John Carpenter’s The Fog.
The movie stars Brian Bonsall, then best known for playing Andy, the youngest Keaton sibling on the later seasons of the sitcom Family Ties. Bonsall plays Preston Waters who, despite his rich-kid name, belongs to a solidly upper-middle-class family. As the movie opens, Preston is having a rough time. His bullying older brothers, Ralph (Michael Faustino, younger brother of Married…With Children star David Faustino) and Damian (Chris Demetral) have been allowed to take over a large part of his bedroom. They’re launching a business called Hand & Foot, evidently specializing in vague odd jobs although we see them do precious little work, and need the space for a computer and its oversized ‘90s accessories.
Preston’s dad, Fred (James Rebhorn), is forever proselytizing about the value of a dollar and the importance of having a job. A strong work ethic is sort of beside the point, just so long as you can say you have a job. He thinks Ralph and Damian are golden boys simply because they’ve taken the initiative to “start a business”. He also doesn’t seem to know how much things actually cost. When Preston’s grandmother accidentally sends him a blank check for his birthday, dad generously fills it out for $11 and urges his son to invest it wisely.
The next day, Preston heads for the bank to open an account with this princely sum. At the same time, an escaped convict named Carl Quigley (Miguel Ferrer, probably wishing he was back in Twin Peaks) is visiting the bank manager, Edward Biderman (Michael Lerner, last seen in this column selling papes to Newsies). Biderman is an old accomplice and Quigley needs his help to launder a million dollars of sequentially marked bills. He gives him just 24 hours to comply, telling him an associate will be by with a check made out to “Cash”.
On their way out, Quigley almost hits Preston with his car, destroying his bike. A crowd soon gathers, including the police. Desperate to avoid calling attention to himself, Quigley thrusts a signed blank check into Preston’s hands, telling him his dad will know what to do with it. Fortunately, Preston’s dad has already given him all the lessons he needs in how checks work. He takes it home and uses his computer to fill it out for one million dollars payable to “Cash”.
Preston’s attempt to cash the check the next day understandably raises a few eyebrows and he’s ushered back to speak to Mr. Biderman. But evidently hiring an 11-year-old kid as a go-between is exactly the sort of move a smooth criminal like Quigley might make. Biderman fills Preston’s backpack with cash and congratulates himself on a job well done. That is, until Quigley’s real associate, Juice (funky cold medina connoisseur Tone Loc), shows up. Whoopsie.
As soon as he gets home, Preston sets his sights on purchasing a neighboring house, a massive stone castle-like edifice (which is apparently a historical landmark in Austin, Texas, now owned by director Robert Rodriguez, who probably won’t appear in this column despite his long association with Disney subsidiaries Miramax and Dimension but you never know). He calls the realtor, disguising his voice with his trusty computer, which also inspires the alias Mr. Macintosh. As it turns out, Preston is bidding against Quigley. When Mr. Macintosh offers $300,000 cash, Quigley bows out and Preston becomes a homeowner.
With $700,000 still burning a hole in his backpack, Preston decides to rent a limo and go on a shopping spree. The chauffeur, Henry (Rick Ducommun, who also appeared in the TV remake of The Shaggy Dog later in 1994), proves to be an excellent shopping companion, very into all the same VR games, go-karts and high-tech toys as Preston. Henry quickly becomes Preston’s closest friend and confidante.
Preston continues living it up in his new house, waving away any questions by saying he’s busy working for the elusive Mr. Macintosh. It seems he has everything an 11-year-old boy could want, except for the love of a beautiful woman. Most of us would probably argue that an 11-year-old boy shouldn’t have the love of a beautiful woman except his mom but the makers of Blank Check disagree. Preston has a crush on Shay Stanley (Karen Duffy), a teller at the bank. Unbeknownst to him, Shay is also an undercover FBI agent investigating Biderman’s money laundering. So, when Mr. Macintosh starts making a name for himself all over town, her interest is piqued.
Since Preston is apparently the only person with access to Mr. Macintosh, she agrees to go on a date with him to get some more information. This improbably turns into one of the most magical evenings of both their lives. Things get cut short, however, when Quigley, Biderman and Juice pop up in hot pursuit.
With everyone from Shay to his parents eager to meet Mr. Macintosh, Preston decides to throw an elaborate birthday party for himself and his alias. He hires a party planner named Yvonne (Debbie Allen, who had recently directed Polly, Disney’s musical TV remake of Pollyanna) to coordinate the affair. She takes Mr. Macintosh’s absence as consent to throw an elaborate bash, complete with hired guests, searchlights and paparazzi.
Everything comes to a head at the party as Preston realizes he’s burned through the entire million in less than a week and can’t afford to pay Yvonne. He confesses the whole scheme to his “guests”, although nobody who would actually care is in attendance. After they’re gone, the bad guys show up. After a Home Alone rip-off where Preston takes them on, Shay turns up with the Feds, demanding to meet Mr. Macintosh. Quigley stupidly assumes that adopting the Mr. Macintosh alias will act as a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card and is immediately placed under arrest, as is Biderman and Juice. Preston goes home having learned an important lesson: money isn’t everything but the stuff it buys kind of is.
There might be the germ of a funny idea in Blank Check. There are lots of stories about a little kid who defrauds and outsmarts criminals, from O. Henry to the aforementioned Home Alone. But the young protagonist needs to be at least somewhat likable and Preston really isn’t. At first, we feel a little bad for him because nobody seems to like him, including his family. But the story never gets us on his side. We don’t care about Preston, he’s just slightly better than all of the truly awful people surrounding him. It doesn’t help that Brian Bonsall’s only direction seems to have been, “Be more like Macaulay Culkin,” including fourth-wall-breaking winks to the camera.
As for the relationship between Preston and Shay, what on God’s green earth were they thinking? OK, so he has an unattainable crush on a woman in her early 30s. That happens and even though this script is woefully unequipped to handle that with any delicacy or nuance, I’ll allow it. But the fact that Shay seems kind of into it? Has one of the best dates of her life with him? And they kiss after negotiating down a time they can meet again?! For the record, they settle on six years, down from ten, which would make Preston 18 and Shay 37. I dunno, maybe someone has uploaded Blank Check 2 to OnlyFans but this all seems very weird in the context of a Disney movie.
I could go on about everything I hated about Blank Check but it’s already occupied too much of my time and brain space. Suffice it to say that Disney released this dog on February 11, 1994. It opened in third place with just over $5 million, behind Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and The Getaway, two other movies I really dislike but are still better than this one. Critics hated it just as much as I did but audiences still spent over $30 million going to see it. To be fair, there weren’t a lot of other options for kids in theaters at the time, although staying home is always a viable choice.
As we forge ahead into the 1990s, we’re going to be seeing a lot more comedies like this from Disney, loud, heavily edited and seemingly inspired by MTV and its bratty little sibling, Nickelodeon. I pray for all our sake that future entries are more enjoyable than Blank Check. Honestly, they couldn’t be much worse.
VERDICT: Disney Minus