Wealth & Money Quote by Gary Cole

Cole is praising a familiar movie family by smuggling in the one detail that detonates the whole setup. “Teenage kids, strained, no money” is the well-worn American realism package: credible stress, modest stakes, a household held together by routine disappointment. He’s not dismissing it; he’s acknowledging the comfort of recognition. The twist is the “Gene Simmons type” dad in the background, a past life of rock-god swagger and performative excess now reduced to grocery bills and awkward dinner-table silences.

That contrast is the point. It turns financial strain into something sharper than a generic hardship plot: a story about downshifting identity. A former demon-of-the-stage living in domestic beige suggests a man haunted by his own legend, and a family forced to coexist with an invisible archive of eyeliner, pyrotechnics, and ego. Cole’s phrasing, “used to be,” is doing quiet work: fame is framed as a costume you can’t fully take off, even when the paycheck stops.

The cultural context here is late-20th-century rock mythology colliding with the modern economy’s comedown. Plenty of films have mapped middle-class stress; fewer add the implication that the dad once embodied a whole era’s fantasy of limitless appetite. That’s why it works: it reframes the “million times” family as a commentary on aging, reinvention, and the awkward truth that your past can be both ridiculous and formative. The joke lands because it’s plausible, and because it’s a little sad.