The Ultimate Gift

A spoiled young rich man (Drew Fuller) is given a series of cryptic tasks in his billionaire grandfather’s will (James Garner plays grandpa in video “flashbacks”). The idea is to make the kid grow up in spite of himself. Cheryl McKay’s script (from Jim Stovall’s novel) is a hybrid of Brewster’s Millions and Pay It Forward, with an air of banal greeting-card sentimentality that Michael O. Sajbel’s flat direction can’t overcome. The film squeaks by on a combination of reliable old pros (Garner, Bill Cobbs as his lawyer, Lee Meriwether as Cobbs’ secretary, Brian Dennehy as an old rancher) and appealing newcomers: male-model-handsome Fuller, Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin as a 9-year-old leukemia victim, and Ali Hillis (who looks like a road-company Helen Hunt) as the girl’s brave-through-tears mother.