'HOT MILLIONS'.........PREHISTORIC CYBER-CRIME.........

Hot Millions (1968)    Decades before they were knighted, Sir Peter Ustinov and Dame Maggie Smith teamed up to play the quirkiest, funniest, most unlikely of romantic teams.......and it was comedic heaven watching these two acting masters work together....

                We don't want to run the risk of over-hyping the movie.......it is, after all, a lighter than air entertainment, designed to keep you smiling and chuckling without provoking you into any uproarious belly laughs.

                 But that still puts it miles above what passes for film comedy today.......

                 Remember, this movie came from an era where vast numbers of modest little dramas and comedies could still be made without budgets that approached the U.S. national debt.

                  Today, no studio would ever greenlight such films........given that they lack dinosaurs, tsunamis and actors wrapped in spandex slamming each other around like human tetherballs.....

                  "Hot Millions", co-written by Ustinov, presented itself as an up-to-date, brightly Technicolored version of those many quaint black-and-white British comedies in which lovable, larcenous eccentrics pull off a clever scam, outwitting and outraging all the usual Authority Figures....

                  Ustinov's Marcus Pendleton, a gentlemen embezzler newly sprung from prison, can't figure out where he'll fit into modern society.......until 'computers' rings a bell.  (Cue those wonderful shots of 60's computers.......enormous machines spitting out punch cards, tapes reels spinning away inside glass cabinets.....)

                   Posing as a data processing whiz, Ustinov secures an executive position at a company-engulfing conglomerate run by a gung ho American (Karl Malden) and his quiet, methodical V.P. (Bob Newhart, doing his patented conservative introvert persona from his stand-up routines)

                   Ustinov wastes no time in overriding the company computer's security safeguard (a big blue alarm light), funneling cash to himself by having it delivered to dummy companies he set up inside bakeries, barbershops and empty offices all over Europe.

                    Complications arise when Ustinov's screwball, screwup apartment neighbor Patty Terwilliger (Maggie Smith) secures a job as his secretary.......having incompetently lost countless other jobs.....

                   And what a pair they are.......Ustinov's virtually a one man show, a riot of muttered asides and improvised expressions.......and you can't help falling immediately in love with Smith's scatterbrained Pixie.....who may not be as hopelessly air-headed as everyone thinks, including herself.
The scene in which these two oddball societal outcasts stumble into marriage is a perfect mixture of unsentimental dry wit and warm romantic comedy.

                    With the suspicious Newhart hot on his trail, it seems like Ustinov's goose is cooked but film has one final delightful twist up its sleeve.........leaving everyone happy, including the audience.

                    Nothing earthshaking......nothing world-changing........but then most 1960's movies didn't hold those daunting aspirations......(and they didn't live or die based on how much money they made on their opening weekends....)

                     Just a light piece of fluff that more than succeeds in giving you a smooth, pleasant ride for an hour and 45 minutes. And that's more than okay with us.....4 stars (****).......(maybe today's government bigwigs should have that big alarm light on their laptops.....)