CinemaNow - Millions

Danny Boyle's Millions , which opened in a handful of theaters last week and is moving into most major markets this weekend, has been attracting big audiences by word of mouth and by the glowing reviews that have greeted it. It's piling up additional raves as it expands. When it first opened in a single theater in New York two weeks ago, Manola Dargis in the New York Times described it as a heartfelt, emotionally delicate children's movie about life and death and all the parts in between. Dargis singled out for particular praise the nine-year-old actor Alex Etel: A gravely beautiful child, with a face splashed with freckles and pooling eyes, the young actor brings to the role the strange ethereality of those children who never fit in to the here and the now but curl into their own private worlds, giggling at jokes no one else hears. Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News called it a family movie in the best sense; it plays to children without talking down and to their parents without pandering. Mostly, it's just good fun. Several critics express surprise that it was created by Boyle, renowned for the black comedy Transpotting and the end-of-the-world horror flick 28 Days Later. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times calls it a lively and most unlikely film, a sweet-natured fable told with a whimsicality all its own. To Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post, the surprise is not that it comes from Boyle but that it comes to the screen at all. It's something of an astonishment to encounter a movie about virtue that's first-rate and very funny to boot, he writes. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe seems equally stunned to encounter imaginative scenes in 'Millions unlike anything in grown-up movies, let alone children's fare. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times is equally delighted, calling it a family film of limitless imagination and surprising joy. And Michael Wilmington at the rival Chicago Tribune describes it as magical ... done with wide-eyed wonder, beguiling wit and imagination, gliding along with a fairy-tale lyricism that's never too obvious or preachy.