The Slick 1994 Kiddie Fantasy Blank Check Was One of Michael Jackson's Favorite Films For Very Understandable Reasons
In the riveting podcast miniseries Michael Jackson: Think Twice it emerges that Michael Jackson became obsessed with the 1994 Disney children’s film Blank Check and wanted to work with its director, Rupert Wainwright.
Jackson loving Blank Check is wholly on brand for reasons that go beyond it being a slick Home Alone knockoff with a cute blonde 11 year old boy as the star, a glaringly inappropriate romantic relationship between the boy lead and grown-up played by Karen Duffy and features the line, “Your butt is mine” more than once.
It goes beyond that. There are moments in Blank Check that feel like they were created specifically for the disgraced King of Pop and suspected kiddy-diddler.
I’m referring to a scene where pint-sized capitalist hero Preston (Brian Bonsall of Family Ties) is being driven in a limousine by comic relief sidekick Rick Duccomon and the driver asks his pint-sized client why he’s spending a crap load of money to live out his most materialistic fantasies.
The boy, who has created a fictional mystery man named Macintosh as a cover to explain why a small child suddenly has access to great gobs of cash, says that Macintosh didn’t have a lot of money growing up.
So when he got older and became obscenely wealthy Macintosh decided to use his fortune to do everything that he wanted to do as a child but couldn’t because he lacked the money and power.
It’s an explanation that doesn’t make much sense considering that Macintosh is living vicariously through a slick, calculating middle school grifter rather than enjoying the gaudy fruits of his labor himself.
Jackson was viciously robbed of a childhood by his abusive father and Motown records. So when he became one of the richest and most popular he devoted long, sad decades to giving his inner child all the ice cream, cartoons, theme park rides and primate pets it could ever desire.
It turns out that getting everything you’ve ever wanted can be the worst thing in the world if you have Michael Jackson’s talent and Michael Jackson’s fame but also Michael Jackson’s demons and Michael Jackson’s brain.
Wainwright ended up directing the notorious teaser trailer for HIStory that depicted Jackson as a Fascist idol towering over the huddling masses like a silent God.
Jackson never appears in Blank Check but his spirit hovers over it malevolently. This is a facile power fantasy for kids and also Michael Jackson.
Brian Bonsai stars as Preston Waters, a moppet from the Macauley Culkin school of Precociousness who is traumatized by classmates having more pocket money than him.
We’re treated to an absolutely non-heartbreaking scene where Preston looks on sadly while other people have fun at a theme park where he apparently does not have a lot of tickets.
At home entrepreneurship is worshipped. Preston’s jackass older brothers have a small business that wins them the respect of their father.
Preston’s luck takes a wildly implausible turn for the better when he gets hit by a weasel-faced degenerate played by Miguel Ferrer and the glowering criminal accidentally gives him a blank check that, that through a turn of events far too stupid to go into, leads to him scoring one million dollars in cold hard cash.
How? Wild coincidences, an aggressive disdain towards realism and—this is important—a home computer.
Preston has access to his brother’s Apple II. Blank Check is a product of that wonderful time when people had no idea what computers could or could not do so in movies like this they can do anything that the plot requires.
In keeping with its crass consumerism Prescott gets the name of his ostensible boss from an Apple computer. Blank Check worships the great and tacky Gods of capitalism and its ornery asshole saint Steve Jobs.
Prescott is no ordinary materialist. He doesn’t want some nice things or to splurge; no, he almost instantly turns into a yuppie. He uses his seven figure instant fortune to buy a castle of a house, ostensibly for his adult boss Macintosh.
Getting a girlfriend is also on his to do-list. This is another instance in which he aims way too high. For reasons I can’t fathom, this Home Alone knockoff for indiscriminating children and Michael Jackson, gives its ELEVEN YEAR OLD HERO an adult love interest in Shay Stanley (Karen Duffy), a sexy bank clerk who is actually an undercover FBI agent tracking down Ferrer’s sleazeball crook, a sleazy businessman played by Michael Lerner and, finally, Juice, muscle played by Tone Loc.
Incidentally this marks the third consecutive 1994 movie I’ve written for this column that features a supporting performance by Loc after Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Car 54, Where Are You? He was everywhere back then.
It would be easy to forgive Blank Check if the eleven year old boy’s intense attraction to a leggy babe in her thirties had a harmless schoolboy crush the older woman never reciprocated.
Instead they go to a fancy restaurant then run joyously through fountains before returning to the boy’s limousine. But the film goes out of its way to establish that the attraction isn’t entirely one-sided.
I’m not sure why this Disney movie for children felt the need to establish that Shay is romantically and possibly even sexually attracted to a pre-teen. For maximum grossness Preston and Shay even share a kiss on the lips.
It’s not a long, lingering smooch, thank God. This isn’t a Lauren Boebert situation where she’s cranking his yank and he’s copping a feel but it is unmistakably a closed mouth kiss between a cute boy and grown-up woman.
Blank Check, currently streaming on Disney+
Shay says Preston should look her up in ten years so that they can finally legally have kinky sex for days on end but he can’t wait that long so he gets Shay to agree to look him up in six years, when he’ll be an ancient seventeen.
Blank Check follows Preston as he lives every child’s empty fantasy of video games and stomach-churning amounts of ice cream and building a massive theme park called Never Land and adopting a chimpanzee and naming him Bubbles. He also briefly marries Lisa Marie Presley. Adult women are really into the kid.
In hindsight, it’s really not surprising that Jackson was a fan.
Preston’s capitalism-worshipping dad thinks it’s great that his underage child is somehow now employed as the right hand man of an eccentric, unseen millionaire. He thinks that’s a better way for a child to spend his time then going to school or playing with friends.
After he spends the million dollars, Preston come to realize that having an insane amount of money isn’t as important as family and friends.
It’s an empty materialist fairy tale whose anti-materialist message can’t help but feel half-hearted and unconvincing.
So romantic!
Ah, but what about Bonsall? Did the cute kid whose wacky shenanigans delighted the King of Pop beat the child star curse and live a healthy, functional, non-criminal life?
Unfortunately, no. He’s had several run ins with the law for assaulting his girlfriend and violating the terms of his parole by smoking marijuana.
Bonsall might just have learned, like Jackson before him, that giving a child lots of money, power and responsibility isn’t always healthy or good for the child or for society.
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