Goddard Bolt (Mel Brooks), financial genius, just bought half of a several block slum from the city of Los Angeles, as part of a big, hideous development he's got planned. Problem, Vance Crasswell (Jeffrey Tambor), just bought the other half of that neighborhood, which is where he grew up. Crasswell proposes a bet: If Bolt can last one month there as just some penniless derelict, he gets Crasswell's half. If he leaves (as determined by a tracking collar wrapped to his ankle), Crasswell gets Bolt's half.
The first hour of the movie is Bolt struggling to find a place to sleep, to get some food, to get some money. Forced to rely on the assistance of other homeless people who take pity on this hapless dope in an increasingly ragged suit. Foremost among them is Molly (Lesley Ann Warren), who saves him from a couple of goons that stole his shoes, and gets her makeshift home burned down as a result.
Brooks plays Bolt as a wildly overconfident guy out of his depth. A guy who says being left $5 million by his father is nothing. Warren plays Molly as initially a bundle of raw nerves and snapping teeth. She's impatient and frustrated with everyone she deals with, especially Bolt. It shifts during a sort of performance she puts on for Bolt that details how she wound up there. It starts angry, at herself and the guy she fell for, and turns increasingly sad as she reenacts falling apart (as she puts it, she's spent the last 8 years having a nervous breakdown.)
I thought the movie would show Bolt use whatever talents he possessed to manage success over the course of the month. We see his initial attempts to make money washing windshields or dancing, but those all fail miserably. Instead, the movie leaps ahead to the end of the month, when Bolt brings Molly along to his mansion, only to learn his lawyers cut a deal with Crasswell behind his back and took everything.
The physical humor got some laughs. Bolt's model of his development descends from the ceiling and crushes the model of the current neighborhood in a very on-the-nose display. He and another homeless man start slapping each other while arguing over which of them actually used to be rich and which has just lost touch with reality. Bolt finds a place to sleep in front of a door, only for the door to swing open, pushing him into the dumpster, followed by the restaurant worker emptying a trash can on him.
The last 30 minutes speedrun Bolt's nervous breakdown and suffering at the hands of an overworked and indifferent - really indifferent - medical system, being brought out of a catatonic state by Molly professing her love, and the two of them leading an army of the homeless in crashing Crasswell's big celebration for the groundbreaking of his hideous urban development. Culminating in Tambor and Brooks using construction equipment like Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. All I could think of during that was nowadays Crasswell would have private security kill the homeless before they got anywhere close. Assuming the cops didn't do it first just for kicks.
Tambor's character has to be obnoxious to make Bolt remotely sympathetic, but even allowing for that, Crasswell is too annoying. His shtick is to enter a room and say, "It's ridiculous for me to be here. I should just leave, right? I should just leave. I'm gonna leave. *door closes* *door swing open and he walks back in* Anyway, . . ." Just irritating.
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