What's not controversial about a group of boys going to solicit a prostitute only to wind up keeping her in their treehouse? Well, mainly, the three boys in question. We open up on one of their late night slumber party treehouse meetings, where in rapid secession beneath the covers they go from the opening line of the movie, "You ever fart and sneeze at the same time?" to "You ever barf up something you know you didn't eat?" to describing their best barf stories, and then to the finer qualities of spitting loogies for distance, including an anecdote about a life-ending collision of a loogie off the Empire State Building! (We 90s boys were true philosophers.) They also have some kind of "sacred" box where they put things they don't understand, which for them this night includes an object they either describe as a rubber bathtub drain plug, a drinking cup, or a device that, in their words, "prevents the passage of sperm into the uterus in girls." (One of them was right.) Another one, our main protag Frankie, puts in a photo of his dead mother, saying he'd like to know what having a mom is like. Whoa! Okaaaay... so... yeah... um.... ... ... Anyways, "Have you ever noticed that girls don't fart??" (FACT) and, hey! The flashlight's glow circle on the ceiling "totally looks like a boob!" (Also FACT)So yeah, pretty accurate to guys, I'd say.
Anyways, after that totally normal father and son breakfast, the movie then follows the quest of our three "charming" young would-be johns watching porn on their Zenith TV-set and hatching a plan to make some quick cash so they can go to "a place where the girls are naked all the time, where guys can see naked girls all they want, all hours of the day, for anyone with guts and a hundred bucks." You guessed it... "the city!" They do this via a "milk money" scheme at their school, and thus the movie's namesake is revealed. It's also revealed that our little goon squad here is not so smooth with girls their own age at their school for being dorkii maximii to the extreme (like we didn't already figure that). (See, Frankie wants the stereotypical blonde "bitchy" girl at school, and so ignores the advances of the more dorky girl who may actually like him but clings to the bitchy blonde girl out of instinct). In any case, before I could even figure out what they were actually doing to make their "milk money," they're off to "the city" on their two-speed bikes (flags and cards in the spokes 'n all) with a bag of nickels to go find the hallowed thing known as "the hooker." They get there and discover that just waltzing up to random women on the street and soliciting for prostitution gets them only a slap in the face (in a scene I WISH I had a GIF for!). This normally would've been the end of most young boys' journeys into true manhood at that time, but it turns out these three are in luck!
While all this was going on, wouldnchaknowit, a smokin' hot prostitute who only goes by the name V ("heart of gold" included) is getting screwed over by her latest john in a mafia shootout that lands her in trouble with both her pimp and this cartel being run by Malcolm McDowell. Long story short, she crosses paths with our young champions of masculinity in training, and decides to take them under her wing (after all, they WERE paying her a bag of nickels). She decides to give them a little "peepshow" for their money's worth and takes them up to her flat. And after some haggling around, she actually does end up lying down on the bed and showing off "the goods" to our three intrepid little goons. Well, unfortunately for him, our hero Frankie suddenly decides he wants to be a "gentleman" and covers his eyes at the moment of truth (no Frankie, whaddayadoin!). She takes their bag of nickels and runs back to her pimp with it right afterwards to try to pay him, to which he replies, "What am I, a Laundromat?" and throws it against the wall. (Once again, genuine lol!)
Long story short, she ends up running into the goon squad again after she steals the car of her pimp. She realizes she has to take these kids back to their own neighborhood to presumably masturbate the rest of the day away, not knowing that there is a large sum of money hidden in the gas tank (of all places!), which was going to be used to pay off Malcolm McDowell. He then becomes obsessed with finding her and retrieving his money from the car (so much so he murders her pimp). The car promptly poops the bed outside the house for reasons our heroes don't know yet (money in the gas tank will do that) and now she needs a place to stay. So the plot of the movie sets in. V is on the run and hiding in this kid's treehouse as his dimwit dad mistakes her to be his son's math tutor (she can multiply my hypotenuse... crap, never mind). His dad tries for a few days to fix the car and offers her a place to stay as they engage in a slew of double-entendres that he fails to get. Heck, the audience of 10-year-olds watching this could get that she's not talking about "starting his engines" literally, or whatever, but wow... how did this guy ever reproduce? (The role of the dad probably should've been played by Robin Williams, or someone who has a little more natural charm than the dry board that this guy was here, but Williams obviously didn't need this at the time.)
Okay... now in most movies of this type, this would set the stage for a typical hijinks-filled romp plot about thirsty teen guys willing to do anything for roll in the sheets, but this movie for some reason had to be a kids movie, so it had to ruin all this "sexy" setup by getting schmaltzy around this point. What ensues is mostly a more by-the-numbers series of "bonding" moments where she becomes more like a mom to this kid and more like a girlfriend to his dad, and also more and more enamored with this slice of domestic bliss she's never been able to experience... yadda yadda. If anything, the movie starts to serve the purpose of taking the boyhood joy of "bringin' yer old man a cold one!" to its furthest extent, as in, "bringin' yer old man a HOT one!" The moral being, kids... get your dad laid. Your life will be so much better for it! (It's a sentiment that probably landed very well with the test audiences.)
It's amazing what a hooker will do for your life in middle school. The confidence boost that Frankie gets from having a "mom" figure in his life seems to do the trick, especially when he starts telling the girls at his school that she's his "aunt" (making her his dad's "sister"... and then leading to that girl's utter confusion at a restaurant when she sees his dad and V making out on a date!) (Mom to brother and sister: "You kids should be more affectionate with each other, like them!" *Kissing* Brother: "I am NOT doing that!"). This leads to the funniest line of the movie where dorky girl realizes the obvious: "Mom she's not his aunt... she's a hooker." (LOL!) The rest of the film plays out much as you'd expect, except for one gut-bustingly hijinky scene where little Frankie boy brings his "aunt" into his Sex Ed class to use as a living demonstration of the female anatomy in front of the whole class... giving him instant LEGENDARY status with everyone and probably an expulsion in the mail. But it does help his chances with the girls he was trying to get with at the beginning, and suddenly he's turning down the advances of the stuck up bitchy blonde girl to get with the dorky girl at the school dance, right in front of her face! Ohhhhh snap! Maybe Frankie's actually doing something right for a change and getting with girls who are more in his league, (or at least in his age group), or at least who maybe have a soul.
In any case, dad finally fixes the car and... you know where this is going. The mobster guy Malcolm McDowell tracks them down and they're off in a high speed chase that ends with all the money going up in flames and Malcolm McDowell certain she went up in the blaze with it, or just not caring either way. But he actually gets away in the end, which is... pretty bold for a movie like this. Now free from being hunted, V is also free to settle down into what we would assume would be that "domestic bliss" happy schmaltzy ending... but not so fast! We learn that V had confiscated at least some large portion of the mobster's money before the car wreck, AND that she's bought the wetlands from being turned into parking lots (making dad really aroused!), AND we learn that she's also bought the ice cream parlor in town... so now she's an independent business woman who donneed-no-man! Whhhhhaaat? But... why don't you guys come down for a scoop some time? Aw shucks! And so in the end, we learn that the only thing better than not being a prostitute is being free to have your ice cream and eat it too.
So all's well that ends well. Frankie gets a girl his own age and a "mom" figure in his life. Dad gets his wetlands (and maybe a friend with benefits). V get's a million smackers rather than a million smacks and operates her own small business. And Frankie's friends... well, at least they don't turn out to be pervert pimps (we assume). Oh yeah, and we all learn that there IS a spot on a girl you can touch that will drive her crazy... (A: "it's her heart.") It was her "heart" all along! Go figure!
Oh the feels... (in the heart that is.)
Actually, trying to figure out how Milk Money even got made is half the fun of watching the movie. As you're sitting there as a kid watching it with your parents, you get the sneaking suspicion that they're in on your secret, porn-mag-under-the-mattress world. As a parent, you're wondering why they didn't just make this either some heartfelt kids' movie or some American Pie raunchy adult comedy. It's a weird one... (if that wasn't obvious to you), but one thing is certain. All's well that ends well, and for once it was all because "boys will be boys!"
For once!
Oh and by the way, these kids are like, 11 years old, at least, so we're in "charming" Goonies territory, not in raunchy "Bill and Ted" territory, but even more amped up, because while those movies were about other things with a sprinkling of wink-wink-nudge-nudge naughty sex for laughs, this movie's whole plot is the naughty bits! So get ready, because you're in for a ride down the hormone roller coaster for this one, but it's everydude's hormone roller coaster, so it's gonna make you laugh, not cry, because boners are funny. It's like a bowl of Lucky Charms that's just the Lucky Charms... all sex all the time.
The movie mainly follows this kid Frank, who suffers from "90s dead mom" disease and reads Cosmo at the breakfast table to get info on women for his Sex Ed class, and his aloof dad who suffers from "needs to get laid because he's interested in swamps" (because "Hey Butthead, wetlands!" "Heheh you said "wet."). He asks his dad if his mom was a virgin when he married her, to which his dad replies, "what, are you studying religion?" (Genuine lol!) So yeah, we get the idea here that this kid is reeeeeeeeeally missing his mom. Not even Littlefoot was getting into gynecology to assuage his dead mom bereavement (just crawling into her womb-like footprints). This kid is all kindsa messed up to say the least, since he conflates "knowing more about his mom" with studying the mysteries of the fabled G-spot in girls (not even joking, this is in the movie). Freud would have a field day on this kid. But his dad is also kinda messed up, because the man retorts with, "in my experience, there is no such spot."
(Well, okay, maybe dad here and I agree on something...)
The movie mainly follows this kid Frank, who suffers from "90s dead mom" disease and reads Cosmo at the breakfast table to get info on women for his Sex Ed class, and his aloof dad who suffers from "needs to get laid because he's interested in swamps" (because "Hey Butthead, wetlands!" "Heheh you said "wet."). He asks his dad if his mom was a virgin when he married her, to which his dad replies, "what, are you studying religion?" (Genuine lol!) So yeah, we get the idea here that this kid is reeeeeeeeeally missing his mom. Not even Littlefoot was getting into gynecology to assuage his dead mom bereavement (just crawling into her womb-like footprints). This kid is all kindsa messed up to say the least, since he conflates "knowing more about his mom" with studying the mysteries of the fabled G-spot in girls (not even joking, this is in the movie). Freud would have a field day on this kid. But his dad is also kinda messed up, because the man retorts with, "in my experience, there is no such spot."(Well, okay, maybe dad here and I agree on something...)
While all this was going on, wouldnchaknowit, a smokin' hot prostitute who only goes by the name V ("heart of gold" included) is getting screwed over by her latest john in a mafia shootout that lands her in trouble with both her pimp and this cartel being run by Malcolm McDowell. Long story short, she crosses paths with our young champions of masculinity in training, and decides to take them under her wing (after all, they WERE paying her a bag of nickels). She decides to give them a little "peepshow" for their money's worth and takes them up to her flat. And after some haggling around, she actually does end up lying down on the bed and showing off "the goods" to our three intrepid little goons. Well, unfortunately for him, our hero Frankie suddenly decides he wants to be a "gentleman" and covers his eyes at the moment of truth (no Frankie, whaddayadoin!). She takes their bag of nickels and runs back to her pimp with it right afterwards to try to pay him, to which he replies, "What am I, a Laundromat?" and throws it against the wall. (Once again, genuine lol!)
Long story short, she ends up running into the goon squad again after she steals the car of her pimp. She realizes she has to take these kids back to their own neighborhood to presumably masturbate the rest of the day away, not knowing that there is a large sum of money hidden in the gas tank (of all places!), which was going to be used to pay off Malcolm McDowell. He then becomes obsessed with finding her and retrieving his money from the car (so much so he murders her pimp). The car promptly poops the bed outside the house for reasons our heroes don't know yet (money in the gas tank will do that) and now she needs a place to stay. So the plot of the movie sets in. V is on the run and hiding in this kid's treehouse as his dimwit dad mistakes her to be his son's math tutor (she can multiply my hypotenuse... crap, never mind). His dad tries for a few days to fix the car and offers her a place to stay as they engage in a slew of double-entendres that he fails to get. Heck, the audience of 10-year-olds watching this could get that she's not talking about "starting his engines" literally, or whatever, but wow... how did this guy ever reproduce? (The role of the dad probably should've been played by Robin Williams, or someone who has a little more natural charm than the dry board that this guy was here, but Williams obviously didn't need this at the time.)
It's amazing what a hooker will do for your life in middle school. The confidence boost that Frankie gets from having a "mom" figure in his life seems to do the trick, especially when he starts telling the girls at his school that she's his "aunt" (making her his dad's "sister"... and then leading to that girl's utter confusion at a restaurant when she sees his dad and V making out on a date!) (Mom to brother and sister: "You kids should be more affectionate with each other, like them!" *Kissing* Brother: "I am NOT doing that!"). This leads to the funniest line of the movie where dorky girl realizes the obvious: "Mom she's not his aunt... she's a hooker." (LOL!) The rest of the film plays out much as you'd expect, except for one gut-bustingly hijinky scene where little Frankie boy brings his "aunt" into his Sex Ed class to use as a living demonstration of the female anatomy in front of the whole class... giving him instant LEGENDARY status with everyone and probably an expulsion in the mail. But it does help his chances with the girls he was trying to get with at the beginning, and suddenly he's turning down the advances of the stuck up bitchy blonde girl to get with the dorky girl at the school dance, right in front of her face! Ohhhhh snap! Maybe Frankie's actually doing something right for a change and getting with girls who are more in his league, (or at least in his age group), or at least who maybe have a soul.
Oh the feels... (in the heart that is.)
For once!
