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Fortune Hunters Reviews

A frenetic, incredibly irritating comedy about a family chasing down a winning lottery ticket, produced by Jon Voight and Paul Family Films. Richard Thomas (of beloved TV series The Waltons) plays the anal-retentive, accountant patriarch of the Hunter family. His wife Betsy (Maureen McCormick, of TV's The Brady Bunch) is unsatisfied with their marriage, and has been corresponding secretly via the Internet with a mystery lover named Valentino (a shaven-headed, bearded C. Thomas Howell). The Hunter children have secrets too; son Shane (Andrew Sandler) is an enterprising gambler, while insecure daughter Courtney (Alison Lohman) is in love with a wanna-be rock star named Razor (Ron Carlson). But when Shane buys a winning lottery ticket worth $50,000,000, all their fantasies seem about to come true. That is, until dad absent-mindedly leaves the ticket in a brand new BMW at a car lot, setting into motion a mad scramble for the ticket. Other greedy types — notably a sleazy car salesman (Corey Feldman) and a rapacious real estate agent (director Neal Mandt) — join the Hunter family in their quest to get their hands on that winning ticket, turning the movie into a lackluster IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD knock-off. The Hunters also run into an assortment of kooks, including a crabby but ultimately lonesome old woman (the fabulous Kaye Ballard) and a no-nonsense nun (Estelle Getty). They learn lessons, bond as a family and, despite a frantic chase through an office building, there's a happy ending. Believe it or not, this inconsequential picture is based on Mark Twain's $30,000 Bequest, which should not be held against him. It is not a remake of the 1944 MILLION DOLLAR KID, a routine Bowery Boys movie.