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How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

A warm, devastating family drama that earns its tears through lived-in detail, cultural specificity, and a carefully calibrated emotional payoff. It balances humor, obligation, greed, and tenderness in a way that makes the central relationship feel painfully real.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

Where to watch: Buy

Movie · Drama

Thu · 2h 6m

Director: Pat Boonnitipat

Starring: Putthipong Assaratanakul, Usha Seamkhum, Sanya Kunakorn

Overview

M, a university dropout low on money and luck, volunteers to take care of his terminally ill grandmother, in the hope of pocketing an inheritance.

Director

Pat Boonnitipat

Cast

Putthipong Assaratanakul, Usha Seamkhum, Sanya Kunakorn

Curator Review

Verdict

A warm, devastating family drama that earns its tears through lived-in detail, cultural specificity, and a carefully calibrated emotional payoff. It balances humor, obligation, greed, and tenderness in a way that makes the central relationship feel painfully real.

Best for

  • Viewers who like intimate family dramas
  • Audiences looking for a heartfelt tearjerker
  • Fans of stories about caregiving, inheritance, and intergenerational tension
  • People who appreciate naturalistic performances and everyday domestic detail

Skip if

  • You want a fast-paced plot or high-concept premise
  • You prefer emotionally distant or minimalist dramas
  • You are looking for light comfort viewing without grief or illness themes
  • Inheritance/family obligation stories are a turnoff

Overview

This is a deceptively simple premise with a lot of emotional precision underneath it. What starts as a selfish plan slowly turns into something more complicated, as the film watches a grandson and grandmother learn each other in the shadow of illness, money, and family expectations. The result is funny in small, sharp bursts and then suddenly crushing when it needs to be.

Worth noting

The film’s strength is how ordinary it feels. It understands the rhythms of caregiving, the awkwardness of family visits, and the way love can coexist with resentment or opportunism. That realism gives the bigger emotional turns real weight, and the grandmother is written and performed with a presence that makes every scene around her feel alive.

Bottom line

It is also a very effective crowd-pleaser in the best sense: accessible, moving, and grounded without becoming manipulative. If you are open to a tearjerker, this one lands hard because it keeps finding humanity inside the messiest motives.

Top Letterboxd reviews

areyouayu (5★) · 15604 likes

THE WAY M DIDNT SPREAD THE FLOWER PROPERLY AT THE END BC HE WANTS TO GET HAUNTED BY HER

Farras❀ (5★) · 7406 likes

"sure, sons get assets, daughters get cancer" THE WAY SHE GAGGED HER????😭😭😭😭

Bara Prima (4.5★) · 6287 likes

-Ranked #3 in Letterboxd's Highest Rated Overall Films of 2024- "Amah, You're my first place." There's a scene where Amah is in pain while babbling at night. She then asks her deceased parents to pick her up. (as if asking to die asap)This scene deeply moved me because I can't even imagine that when we grow old, even after having grandchildren and facing illness etc., we might still long for our parents' love and their presence around us. 😭😭😭

jo (4.5★) · 5420 likes

when you realised your grandma is just a girl; and so is your mum 😭

chefff (5★) · 5132 likes

more like how to kill yourself in 126 minutes

Themes

family obligation, caregiving, inheritance, intergenerational relationships, illness and mortality, emotional reconciliation, greed and guilt, domestic realism

Topics

tearjerker, family drama, illness, caregiving, intergenerational, domestic realism, emotional, Thai cinema, coming-of-age, melancholy

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