This week, B-Movie Enema cashes out.

Let us take a trip to July 2020. The country, nay, the WORLD was in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. Remember that? COVID? You should, because, technically, it never really went away. It’s here… forever. Just like me, sitting at this computer, writing these reviews… I am forever.

Anyway, during the dark early days of the pandemic, and no movie theaters or restaurants open to get out of the house to enjoy, along came streaming services busting out all over the goddamn place. Content was flooding the void… for better or worse. Every streaming platform was booming. Movies that would have been buried by the mega releases in theaters were now being consumed by a greater percentage of the population. During this time, it was uncertain when new blockbusters were ever going to return. It wasn’t even sure if movie theaters were going to survive the shutdowns. But then, like a silver bird flying in from the far-off horizon, came a savior…

Money Plane.

Oh yes. Money Plane dropped onto streaming services to much fanfare. Well, maybe not the fanfare the movie’s distributor, Quiver Distribution, might have expected. No, you see… Money Plane was lambasted from the very moment it arrived on streaming platforms. Largely disliked by critics who often called it “dumb” or “terrible.” Hell, remember those RedLetterMedia guys I talked about a couple of weeks ago? Yeah, they eagerly reviewed it on their Half in the Bag show. I think their one positive for the movie actually summed up how many felt when watching a truly bad movie – at least it was a new movie when no others were being released.

The movie was directed by Andrew Lawrence in his directorial debut. Since then, he’s made a bunch more, largely direct-to-streaming movies. Several of the movies, including this one, feature or star one or both of his actor brothers, Matthew and Joey. That’s right, that’s Matthew Lawrence, best known for Boy Meets World back in the classic TGIF days (wait a few weeks for a lot more reminiscing on the subject of ABC’s TGIF days), and Joey Lawrence, best known for the early 90s show Blossom. If you are wondering who Joey Lawrence is and if you actually remember him or not, well, just imagine a sort of loopy teenager saying “Whoa!” and you might conjure up those memories of who he was.

Aside from all three Lawrence brothers being involved in Money Plane, it’s not like we’re short of other recognizable names in the cast. Leading the film is professional wrestler Edge, Adam Copeland. I’m sure, in no way, shape, or form will he be, more or less, a sentient pile of roast beef hanging off a sorta human skeleton. We also have Thomas Jane, who was once a Punisher in a movie. He also has one of the greatest cameos in film history in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Denise Richards is here too. She was a Bond girl in a movie that I actually quite dearly love, and, for one reason or another, what I call the “final” classic James Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough.

But maybe the most interesting name, and the one I think gets a lot of extra attention in this movie, is Kelsey Grammer. Grammer is a guy that I have a great deal of appreciation for, even though I don’t think I could possibly agree with him on a single political position. First, and foremost, he’s fantastic in my all-time favorite television show, Cheers. While I always loved Frasier Crane, I actually didn’t continue on with his own spinoff series, appropriately named Frasier. When Cheers ended, I think I didn’t want the constant reminder that it was no longer there, with Frasier still running about over in Seattle. He’s had another extremely long-running character on my second-favorite show of all time, as Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons. The episode “Cape Feare” is an all-time great of that series. He’s in a great episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Cause and Effect.” He was a fantastic pick to play Dr. Hank McCoy, the Beast, in the otherwise pretty bad X-Men: The Last Stand. That’s a role he is currently reprising in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. My point is, Kelsey Grammer, despite my dislike of his politics, is someone who seems intricately woven into all my very favorite things.

Let’s see if this movie, which is somehow showing a budget of $586,000, can live up to the exact hype this blog is all about. But wait… Somehow, this movie was made with all the people in it that I described above for less than $600,000, but with almost no way for my brain to reconcile, it made only $618 at the box office. That seems impossible even with COVID-era restrictions. If Wikipedia said it made nothing because of COVID, I’d accept that. Somehow $0 makes infinitely more sense to me.

But, I hear the announcement at my gate that this Money Plane is about to board, so let’s take to the skies!

Our 80-minute adventure begins with Jack Reese (Copeland), a retired professional gambler and active professional thief, going to an art museum. In voiceover, he talks about how important it is for any successful job to have three components: a good team, “there’s how things are and how things appear to be,” and “plan A is only as good as your plan B.” Now, all this is well and good, but this is already starting from a pretty silly premise. Isn’t it funny that Jack’s tech guy didn’t have his pass to access the museum set up right, and it caused a little bit of a scramble and concern the moment the job started? Isn’t it quirky that he banters with his team and generally doesn’t exactly come off as particularly capable to be a good art thief?

Also, when his team questions whether or not it is normal for art museum guards to be armed with machine guns, they press on with the plan to steal whatever painting they were there for. That… that doesn’t seem smart. Not to mention, they got duped from the very beginning, as whatever painting they were there for was already stolen before Jack got there. Also, their van had some sort of hacking or tracking device on it that was the key to them getting beaten by another thief or crew. Also, THIS was the establishing shot of the museum:

That is not an art museum. That isn’t even a non-art museum. That’s a prison, or an abandoned factory, or an abandoned… prison… factory?

Also, that’s one Lawrence on the Lawrence-o-Meter:

Anyway, so the job is fucked, and Jack and crew need to now answer for that. Their big boss, Darius Emanuel Grouch III (yes, that is the character’s name), is played by Kelsey Grammer. Now, if you think the name Darius Emanuel Grouch III is a goofy name for a badass boss man, he also goes by “The Rumble.” That… That is also terrible. Maybe the worst thing Kelsey Grammer has ever done. Wait…

In 1988, he got arrested for what? Oh. Well, that’s not the worst thing… Wait, in 1995, he slept with what kind of babysitter? Oh. That’s… Woof. Okay. What do you mean there’s more? In 1998, he claimed who stole what from him? Jeepers. This guy is a freak. In 2025, he said what about Donald Trump? Ew.

Okay, so The Rumble it is, then.

The Rumble is pissed off that the painting was not procured. The painting he wanted was called “The Disturbed Duckling.” I am not even going to look up if that is a real painting or not. Anyway, he casually threatened to blow Jack’s brains all over a blank canvas that he had two goons hold behind the thief. The Rumble goes on to say that he knows Jack owes a lot of bad people a lot of money, but he decided to “buy” that debt. In other words, he paid off the debt as a way to force Jack to work for him.

But when it comes to the matter of this $40 million painting that Jack failed to procure for him – never mind that he sent Jack to an abandoned haunted prison factory and not an art museum to get the painting – Jack now owes The Rumble a debt of that value. And so we learn about the legendary “money plane.” Basically, the money plane is a flying casino. Anything you want to bet on, the plane will cover it. Here, allow Sideshow Frasier to explain it much better than I can.

But, yes, the fabled Money Plane is said to have millions of dollars of cash aboard as well as billions of dollars of crypto. I really don’t think that’s how crypto works, but I assume the people ON the plane may HAVE billions of crypto bucks. Whatever. It’s never illegal what goes on up there because the plane flies around international space. The job is for Jack and his crew to go up there and clean the place out for The Rumble. When the job is done, Jack and crew are done with The Rumble. Whatever is left over in the vault of the plane? Well, Jack and his crew can keep that for their troubles.

Jack’s cover is as a human trafficker who did all his transactions and dealings digitally, so no one knows who he is. The real guy that Jack is pretending to be was killed by his crew’s sexy femme fatale, Isabella, who apparently is an assassin? Eh, whatever. She killed the human trafficker, and her cover for this job is as a flight attendant. Trey, the techy guy who is good at computerizing, is posing as Jack’s character’s right-hand man. Iggy, Andrew Lawrence’s character we saw earlier in the movie, is Jack’s man on the ground doing what usually would be Trey’s job on a heist. But we also know that he’s grounded because he’s a Lawrence and likely not going to be tough enough to be a badass plane heist guy.

The covers and buy-in for Jack to gamble with have all been provided by The Rumble. The job’s plan will be as such… Isabella will create a distraction so that Jack can take control of the cockpit of the plane. While he flies the plane, Trey will cover for him. In the bowels of the plane, Isabella will locate and open the vault for the physical cash. Then, Trey will hack the server with all the crypto bucks on it and transfer that down to Iggy on the ground, who will then have it for The Rumble.

If the plan fails, well, Jack’s wife (Denise Richards) and his daughter will be killed by The Rumble’s goons.

Oh, and I guess the whole other trope of these movies with the thief being allowed to leave if he completes one last job will also be out of the question. I guess. The Rumble wasn’t as clear about that as he was about killing the wife and daughter.

The night before Jack leaves for the Money Plane, he’s visited by Harry, played by Thomas Jane, for his one and only scene in this movie. He’s there to basically be the emotional exposition dump of telling Jack this is a suicide job. But also being there to act as a sounding board for Jack to do that masculine thing of saying that it’s a risk, but if he succeeds, his family is going to be set up for life. That’s what a real man does… do crazy shit that is on some sort of spectrum of illegal to be a good husband and father.

It does bum me out that we have the likes of Thomas Jane, Kelsey Grammer, and Denise Richards in this movie. They aren’t phoning this in. Grammer is bonkers in this (and, frankly, the MVP of this movie because of how bonkers he is). Thomas Jane is doing a whole accent and affectation that kind of makes him unrecognizable in this movie. These are actually accomplished actors and stars, and they are relegated to these dumb action movies with preposterous plots. Richards was a Bond girl, for god’s sake. She was one of the greatest bombshells of the 90s and early 00s. What are we doing here?

Op… Here’s Lawrence #2 for the Lawrence-o-Meter.

Actually, Joey Lawrence, as the Concierge, is giving it his all here, too. I’m sure this isn’t just for his brother directing this film, but he’s got this grumbly way of talking in this that makes him kind of evil sounding. He’s playing this pretty straight too. Like, for real, speaking of Bond films, as he talks about being the representative of the house for the Money Plane, I could see him fitting right into a Bond movie as he lays down the rules of the money and his role as the representative and what have you, as Bond prepares to take on the baddie at a game of baccarat. He is carrying himself like a guy who is a total numbers/money dude, but also maybe not one to fuck with either. Good job, Joey.

But here’s the third and final Lawrence to make his appearance, and my personal favorite of the trio, Matthew.

That mustache is brilliant. The elder brothers are all playing against type. I have to imagine Matty here was overjoyed at the idea of playing a cowboy. He saw this as a real opportunity to put on a fake cookie duster and a big ol’ white cowboy hat and finally realized what it means to be on the top of his game. Fuck that Boy Meets World jazz… This outfit is the pinnacle.

Speaking AGAIN of Bond movies… The first game is Texas Hold ‘Em. That’s what Jack is here to play at Casino Royale. The dialogue in this scene is fucking ridiculous. It’s ALL CHARACTER EXPOSITION DUMP. There’s one guy who is an arms dealer. Between this guy, Jack, and another player named Mia, we learn that he is an infamous arms dealer who got arrested and acquitted by the United States government, and that makes him a free man. You know, just in case we don’t know what “acquitted” means. Also, this guy’s goon also punches out a gay flight attendant when the attendant just asked if he wanted anything to drink. He is told that they will not be warned again about the “No Tolerance” policy regarding bad behavior.

Anyway, Matthew Lawrence sits down and starts winning like a madman, and it is brilliant.

Jack makes a purposely bad bet to lose to Matthew Lawrence. This gives Jack the ability to ask to retire to one of the private rooms on the plane so he can begin his big plan to take over the big plane. This leaves Trey to play the game of Matthew Lawrence’s choosing after winning the poker game. Matthew Lawrence chooses Russian Roulette. I like that J.R. Crockett (Matthew Lawrence’s character) is called the “undefeated champion” of Russian Roulette.

Alright, so the plan starts seemingly the way Jack envisioned it, except for a few minor details. The first, yes, everyone seems to definitely pay attention to Isabella. That works well for the start of the big plan. She distracts the pilot so that Jack can punch him out. Okay, so what Jack forgets is that all large airliners have a co-pilot; he has to dispatch that guy, too. But there’s another problem. A guy named Reid, the big arms dealer’s lackey, can’t seem to stop watching and following Isabella. Before she even met up with Jack, the goon was already trying to get a little action with her in a restricted area of the plane. It’s okay, though. I’m sure that will create no future problems if Isabella and Reid ever run into each other again.

As Trey tries to get into the cargo hold to check out the server room, he is reminded of a couple of the Money Plane’s darker elements. Joey Lawrence spots someone cheating at a card game and shoots him dead to reiterate the zero-tolerance policies on the plane. He’s then ushered into a section of the plane where people are betting on “themed” events. The event he’s asked to bet on is how long a man can survive in a cage with a cobra. The next event has two Russian guys sitting around drinking until one chops off the arm of the other with an axe.

A lot of this middle section of the movie is a bit of a slog. It’s largely Jack sitting in the cockpit of the plane while Iggy sets up the ground position for him to triangulate with the plane. We have Trey “comedically” interacting with the events on the plane. And Isabella is just walking around the plane, looking in nooks and crannies and reporting back that she’s not found anything. I want to remind everyone of something I said at the start of this breakdown… This is an 80-minute movie. That’s a runtime that tells me there is little to no fat in this movie. Unfortunately, there is a LOT of fat on this bone.

When we finally get to something interesting and fun, it only lasts about a literal minute. Isabella runs into a guy guarding the vault on the plane. At first, you think she’s going to distract him by doing a sexy dance. But then she attacks him, and it’s a little bit of a tussle that ends with her RIPPING THE GUY’S EARS OFF HIS HEAD. This only takes, like, a minute, though. The movie seemingly just wanted the sexy femme fatale to do something, but didn’t commit to the bit to have this be worth the wait. It was so interested in just getting to the next part of the movie that all she had to do was rip the guy’s ears off and then… That’s it.

Oh well… So Thomas Jane does pop back up in the movie. He was tasked by Jack to do a little bit of homework on why the first job at the start of the movie went sideways. The reason they were unable to steal the painting was that it was a setup by The Rumble to begin with. He owned that painting already, and it was on display in Europe. I guess the whole setup was to get them onto the Money Plane and into this exact situation. Oh my, what a twist! I did not see that coming at all!

Exactly why does he need this big plan to get Jack to do this thing? Eh, who knows? The Rumble works in mysterious ways. And one of those ways is not to simply ask for a guy to do a thing for him.

Also, as I eluded to earlier, it sure does seem as though that goon of the arms dealer is going to be a thorn in the side. The arms dealer has been irritated that Trey has been accidentally winning everything since Matthew Lawrence died by Russian Roulette. The lackey had been following Isabella and saw her and Trey together and told the arms guy. And now, they are following Trey around. So much so, they find him sneaking into the server room where he is going to drain the crypto bucks from everyone’s accounts.

Everything is coming to a head. Jack has flown the plane into range for the crypto bucks to be beamed down to Iggy. But as the transfer takes place, the arms dealer wants to beat the shit out of Trey while he has his goon fight and beat up Isabella. She handles the goon in a much more interesting fight than the other one we saw. She lets him get a good grab on her boob before breaking his hand and then smashing bottles and stabbing him to death with them. She then comes in to deal with the arms dealer by tossing him into the server and electrocuting him.

This, though, ruins the server and interrupts the transfer of the crypto bucks. Meanwhile, on the ground, Iggy is captured by more of The Rumble’s guys. Again, exactly why he wants to continuously double-cross these guys he’s hired, I cannot say. However, Jack already has another plan up his sleeve. Thomas Jane flies a drone with a gun into the area and kills some of The Rumble’s guys while Iggy shoots some of the goons himself.

This gives Jack’s team time to figure out a different way to steal the crypto bucks. This plan B will actually trace all the plan of stealing of the crypto bucks back to The Rumble and turn the tables on the big bad. However, realizing that Jack is double-crossing him, The Rumble decides to go ahead and make good on basically killing everyone in Jack’s life. He starts with Thomas Jane.

I mean, he threatened Denise Richards and a little girl, but sure, sure… Start by trying to kill The Punisher. I’m POSITIVE that will fail. And guess what? It fails. Thomas Jane wipes the floor with these losers.

On the plane, Jack engages the autopilot and tells Trey to transfer the crypto bucks evenly across a bunch of nonprofits to basically give aid to the people the criminals on the Money Plane harmed. I mean… That’s pretty good. That wasn’t at all telegraphed when Jack read Robin Hood to his daughter earlier in the movie, but whatever. He, along with Isabella and Trey, decides he doesn’t want the physical cash, and they dump that out of the plane.

To get rid of The Rumble, Jack uses a recording of The Rumble talking about being the baddest motherfucker and how he is taking down the Money Plane to play for the guys on the plane. Basically, he puts one big giant hit out on The Rumble. Joey Lawrence tells everyone the House is going to refund all lost funds and opens a bet for how quick before someone kills The Rumble. Whoever bet about 30 seconds won the bet.

Three months later, the movie is now in Istanbul. That $40 million painting that Jack and his crew were originally sent to steal has been replaced by a stick figure drawing. The publicity of the heist drove the price of the painting up so that Jack and everyone can have a pretty dang good life, and everything ends happily as we get one more brief on-screen appearance from Denise Richards before the credits roll.

Alright so… What about it? Is Money Plane as bad as everyone said it was? I’m going to say… not really. Don’t get me wrong. It is not good. However, there are a few things it knows how to do well, as well as there being a few things it does not do well. Let’s start with the not-so-great. It’s surprisingly flimsy. I’ve now mentioned for what will be the third time… This movie is only 80 minutes long. There really is only about 30 real minutes of action and plot. The other 50 minutes are filled with a random collection of scenes. Any attempt to make the movie suddenly interesting or exciting again is quickly brushed off, like the aforementioned fight between the femme fatale hot lady and the vault guard. I’m not asking for a They Live fistfight scene that takes like 10 minutes to resolve. But I would like something that is a little bit longer and more thrilling than a 60-second tussle. Sure, bonus points for ripping the guy’s ears off his head, but still…

I’ll come back around to that 50 minutes of filler in just a moment, but I do need to talk about the dialogue in this movie. Most of the lines in the actual plot portion of the movie are bad. Really bad. The whole bit about who the arms dealer was, and his entire backstory along with it, was a real plodding bore and laughably stupid. People knew who he was. I must assume they also know he was acquitted. It’s the kind of dialogue that someone who may not know how to reveal things about someone’s past without including it as a first-person narrative. This is the type of stuff you’d have Thomas Jane or Kelsey Grammer reveal to Adam Copeland. OR! Adam Copeland would have told his team as they prepared for the heist.

And speaking of the action stuff in this movie. Why is it that you hired a professional wrestler to lead this movie and only have him engage in a single fistfight when he took over the cockpit? Why is he not taking down the arms dealer or his goon? For most of the 55 minutes or so that his character is on the Money Plane, he is sitting in the cockpit. He is not engaged with the movie. He is not doing action scenes. Maybe that was a combination of he is leading the movie, but they wouldn’t have time to really use him if he didn’t have a bunch of scenes that could be filmed in a single day, and they couldn’t really have him do a lot of physical stunt work due to any kind of contractual interference from his day job. I don’t know, and it’s really frustrating.

Similarly frustrating is the character of Isabella, who is simultaneously hot, badass, possibly interesting (what with her assassinating a guy at some point in her past), and also exceptionally boring. I don’t mind that she handles the lion’s share of the action and fisticuffs of the movie. I enjoy me a badass chick. However, because the movie doesn’t really provide any depth to any of the good guys in the movie (aside from the brief moment in which they decide to give the money away instead of keeping it for themselves), it relegates her to being “punch girl.” What is her personality? She punches. What is her role on the team? She punches. What’s that story about her killing a guy like she is an international woman of mystery? I dunno, she punches!

The only thing about the primary plot that I think sticks the landing seven ways to Sunday is how much scenery Kelsey Grammer is chewing as Mr. Grouch/The Rumble. He is absolutely insane in this movie, and I thank him for his service. He knows what this movie is. He’s just going balls to the wall here. It’s great! Give him a B-Movie Enema Academy Award for this performance.

And let’s circle back around to that “filler” part of my critique of the movie because I have something surprising to say… The filler is the best part of this movie. That’s where you have TWO Lawrences that light this movie on fire whenever they are on screen. Joey Lawrence is doing a great job here, and when he’s on screen, something nefarious is going on. He might just be announcing the next game. He might be shooting a guy in the back of the head for cheating at cards. Whatever it is he is doing, I’m on board for it. It’s also where you have Matthew Lawrence giving Kelsey Grammer a run for his money in the realm of bonkers performances. Jesus Christ, am I really about to say this? Yeah, I think I am. Whenever either Lawrence is on screen, or even Grammer, the movie lights up in ways that no other character can in this movie. If nothing else, this is definitely a fun bad movie for a bad movie night.

That’s also where I must say that if this movie had been made 35 years earlier and came out through the likes of Cannon Films, this would probably be a classic of the era. This isn’t really that far off from some of the Cannon movies that would have starred a Dudikoff or a Norris. The movie follows the classic Cannon idea of being action-centric, adhering largely for the male audience, and doesn’t make a whole lot of logical sense. But that kind of makes this movie sorta fun. It’s dumb as fuck, but I dunno, I could have had a real bad time with it too.

So, it turns out that my prediction that this movie was going to be some sort of pennace for having two movies to start 2026 off that were just for my own personal connection and enjoyment turned out to be kind of wrong, but also not entirely wrong. And I think next week will at least keep the fun going. While many think this is a dip for the series that I’ve been slowly working my way through, it’s still Troma, and that can’t be too bad of a thing.

Come back next time when one of our greatest heroes gets tempted to the dark side with The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie.