Greedy (1994)

Grasping, obnoxious family members battle each other while waiting for a cranky, rich old relative to kick off: Doesn't this comic plotline appear in the notebooks of ancient Greek playwrights? In Greedy, a modern retelling by quirk-loving My Cousin Vinny director Jonathan Lynn and punch-line-loving City Slickers writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, Kirk Douglas is the cranky Croesus who threatens to leave his dough to his bikini-wearing ''nurse'' (Olivia d'Abo); Michael J. Fox is the long-lost, high-minded favorite nephew who just might persuade the old guy to keep the money in the family. I wish every joke were sharper and darker. I wish the pacing weren't so flabby. And most of all I wish every frame contained Phil Hartman. As a sleazy would-be heir, he steals each scene he's in and makes statements such as ''I didn't like the Beatles, and I don't like you'' zing like the poetry of Aristophanes, assuming Aristophanes wrote for Saturday Night Live. B-