How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)
★★★★½ — How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)
How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies arrived in Thai cinemas in April 2024, produced by GDH 559 and Jor Kwang Films, two of Thailand's most prominent production houses. The film was directed by Pat Boonnitipat, making his feature debut, and the premise is, on paper, a fairly uncomfortable one: a young man moves in with his terminally ill grandmother primarily to secure a place in her will. That the film turned into one of the most talked-about Southeast Asian releases of the year is a testament to what Boonnitipat and his cast managed to do with that unpromising starting point. For audiences who've followed Thai cinema beyond its action-heavy exports (and if you haven't, our look at Ong-Bak (2003) gives a sense of how varied that industry can be), this is a very different kind of film, quiet, domestic, and rooted entirely in family dynamics rather than spectacle.
The film runs a generous 126 minutes, and Boonnitipat uses that runtime to let the story breathe, resisting any urge to rush through the emotional beats. The central relationship is between M, a university dropout trying to keep his head above water, and his maternal grandmother. Putthipong Assaratanakul, known to Thai audiences primarily as a pop star and television personality, takes the role of M, and his performance here is notably understated, all awkward silences and slowly thawing indifference. It was a somewhat unconventional piece of casting, and that tension between the performer's public image and the character's ordinariness is part of what gives his work here its particular texture. Usha Seamkhum plays the grandmother, and her performance is, by most accounts, the anchor of the whole picture: warm without being saccharine, funny without being a caricature, and quietly formidable throughout. The supporting cast, including Sanya Kunakorn, Sarinrat Thomas, and Pongsatorn Jongwilas, fills out the family portrait with the kind of polished but unremarkable reliability that lets the two leads do their work uninterrupted. For those who enjoy family dramas that take their time and trust the audience, it sits comfortably alongside other celebrated examples of the form, such as Yi Yi (2000), another film reviewed here that finds enormous emotional weight in the rhythms of ordinary family life.
The film became a significant box office success across Southeast Asia and attracted attention well beyond its home territory, particularly among diaspora audiences for whom the specific dynamics of filial duty, inheritance, and the care of elderly relatives carry a very personal resonance. Whether or not any of that biographical weight applies to you, the material clearly struck a nerve with a wide range of viewers. It is worth noting that 2024 produced a fair few films that wore their emotions openly and with varying degrees of success (our take on All That's Left of You (2025) touches on similar territory), but this particular film earned its reputation for emotional honesty rather than simply manufacturing it. Boonnitipat, working from a script shaped around these domestic spaces and generational silences, made a film that feels personal even to viewers with no direct connection to Thai family culture. That is no small achievement for a first-time feature director.
A-Z World Movie Tour Thailand How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is a quietly devastating, deeply human Thai film that sneaks up on you with warmth, humour, and an emotional punch that lingers long after the credits roll. At first, it sounds like a cynical premise: M, a struggling young man desperate for money, decides to move in and care for his terminally ill grandmother, not out of love, but in hopes of landing in her will. But what begins as selfishness slowly transforms into something far more profound: a genuine, tender connection between two people who barely knew each other. The film is beautifully paced, never rushing the quiet moments that matter most, the shared meals, the awkward silences, the small acts of care that build trust. M’s grandmother, played with quiet dignity and sly humour, isn’t a saint or a burden; she’s real, stubborn, wise, funny, flawed. And as their bond deepens, so does the film’s exploration of family, regret, forgiveness, and what it truly means to be there for someone at the end. It’s not manipulative or overly sentimental. In fact, its honesty is what makes it so powerful. You laugh, you cry, and you see pieces of your own family in theirs. The final act hits with the weight of truth, life doesn’t always give you a second chance, but it does give you time, if you choose to use it right. Heartfelt, authentic, and unforgettable. A beautiful reminder that the things we chase aren’t nearly as valuable as the people we already have.
Films like this one remind me why I started doing this in the first place. It would have been easy to write this off from the synopsis alone, a bit of a con-man-visits-a-relative setup that could have gone very broad or very mawkish, and I'm glad I didn't. There's something here that I keep coming back to in the films I find genuinely affecting: the refusal to tidy everything up, to let the messiness of people stand as it is. If you're building a watchlist of recent drama that earns its tears rather than extorting them, I'd put this near the top, and I'd also point you towards Mustang (2015), another drama reviewed on here that handles family, constraint, and emotional honesty with a similarly sure hand. Some films you recommend because they're impressive. This one you recommend because it stays with you, which is a different thing entirely.
Rating: ★★★★½ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2025-09-11
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024) on YouTube
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