Money No Enough - Reception

Reception

Money No Enough earned S$50,000 from sneak previews and S$42,000 on its opening day, then topped the local box office for a month. In total, the film made S$5.8 million, and remains the best Singapore box office showing by a local movie bettered only by two foreign films (Titanic and The Lost World: Jurassic Park). After its box office run, 70,000 VCDs of Money No Enough were sold, which remains a record for a Singaporean film. The movie received a mixed critical reception with LoveHKFilm.com commending the film as "an effective satire of...Singaporean culture" and noted that the actors "do a credible job representing characters from Singapore's varying social strata", while a Variety review described the movie as "initially fresh and amusing but ultimately too one-note and local in its humor to travel far". Francis Dass of the New Straits Times wrote that Money No Enough was "spot-on" and "funny", but criticised the "clichéd script and the director's penchant for melodrama".

The success of Money No Enough sparked the film career of Jack Neo, who won the Best Director Award at the 1998 Silver Screen Awards and would go on to make hits like I Not Stupid, and the development of the Singaporean film industry. Four more Singaporean movies were produced in 1998, two of them described by critics as copycats of Money No Enough. With its use of Hokkien and crude portrayal of Singaporean life, the film is also credited with paving the way for other Singaporean cultural phenomena such as mrbrown and TalkingCock.