Blank Check

February 11, 1994: Walt Disney Pictures released Blank Check, directed by Rupert Wainwright. Premise: young Preston Waters stumbles into a blank check from a crook, fills it in for $1 million, and buys himself a mansion with a waterslide, a limo, and an invented adult benefactor identity—"Mr. Macintosh"—to pull it off. Brian Bonsall played Preston; Karen Duffy, Miguel Ferrer, and Tone Lōc filled out the cast. The budget was $10 million; the US gross was $30.8 million, a moderate return that nonetheless found its true audience later.

Critics eviscerated it (9% on Rotten Tomatoes), but CinemaScore pegged it as an A−, which meant the actual audience—the kids who saw it in theaters and rented it over and over—loved it unreservedly. It was a movie that understood the fundamental wish of childhood: unlimited resources and zero oversight. The film's legacy is complicated by modern criticism of a scene in which an adult FBI agent kisses 11-year-old Preston on the lips—a moment that has aged so badly it's now the first thing mentioned in any recent coverage of the film. But for 90s kids, the memory is pure fantasy: the mansion, the waterslide, the thrill of a prank pulled off without consequences.