Rotten Tomatoes score: 25%
This is the story of a little boy who possessed enormous wealth and worldwide renown, who had things that other children could only dream of, but whose fortune and fame prevented him from having a normal childhood. Then, when he was 14 years old, he starred in the movie Richie Rich.
Macaulay Culkin was without a doubt the biggest child star of the 90s, but by 1994 he was no longer the junior hit-maker he had been in his Home Alone days. In that year, he appeared in Getting Even with Dad, The Pagemaster, and this. For his efforts, he was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award.
Now, I've never seen Getting Even with Dad, but it looks awful; and as for The Pagemaster, the less said the better. But I am at a loss to explain the antipathy toward this Harvey Comics adaptation. Granted, I as a nine-year-old boy was exactly the target audience. And looking back on it 20 years later, I can't help comparing it to Richie Rich's Christmas Wish, a comparison that would make Howard the Duck look like Citizen Kane.
Richie Rich is the richest boy in the world. According to one of the alternate posters, he has 17 billion dollars, but I'm not sure how they figured that. (In the movie, Richie's father is said to be worth $70 billion, so maybe whoever wrote the poster just misheard the dialogue.) But numbers aren't important—suffice it to say that Richie is cartoon-rich. He lives in a stately mansion (actually the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C.); he is waited on by an English valet (Jonathan Hyde) who wears a wingtip collar and waistcoat to exercise; there's a McDonald's franchise in his house and a family portrait carved into the face of a mountain out back; and his father employs an in-house science team that cranks out a steady stream of impossible inventions, for no apparent business purpose.
But all is not well. For one thing, Richie's life of privilege is also one of responsibility, and he is so busy he has no time to be a kid. A perhaps even more serious problem is that the Rich Enterprises CFO, Laurence Van Dough (John Larroquette), is planning to murder the entire Rich family and take over their company. (Do you ever wonder what went wrong in your childhood that deprived you of the opportunity to outwit lamebrain criminals?) His plan nearly succeeds, as he plants a bomb in Dad's private plane just before the family flies off to meet the Queen. But at the last minute, Richie decides to stay behind and hang out with normal kids; meanwhile, Mom and Dad manage to escape the deadly explosion and strike out in a life raft.
Van Dough's efforts to loot the company are stymied by Richie, who asserts his rights and runs the company in his parents' stead. (Richie tells Van Dough that his father has never fired anyone, which is hard to believe, but what do I know about business?) Meanwhile, Van Dough frames Richie's trusted friend and valet Cadbury for the murders, so it's up to Richie and his normal-kid friends to bust him out and take down the real bad guys. Fortunately for the ragtag band of kids, they have super-scientist Keenbean (Mike McShane) on their side, providing them with a robot bee and a corrosive so powerful it eats through everything except the tube it's kept in.
Conveniently, Van Dough's evil plan has shifted from killing Mom and Dad Rich to kidnapping them. The in-story explanation is that Van Dough needs them to open the Rich family vault, but it also has the salutary effect of sparing us an additional act where Richie rescues the parents. The final boss fight against Van Dough takes place on the face of Mount Richmore, which allows for some high-spirited action scenes. (It reminds me of the finale of North by Northwest, but I don't know how intentional that was.) Anyway, they defeat Van Dough, proving once again that fabulous wealth can triumph over villainy.
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