Review: Kajillionaire

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Miranda July is sort of the eccentric Donna Tartt of filmmaking - she makes a movie about once a decade and her work displays its own unique voice. Her debut feature, "Me and You and Everyone You Know," was a rightfully acclaimed low budget indie, but her follow up - "The Future" - was a sophomore slump, an oddball indie comedy trying too hard to be quirky.

Her latest, "Kajillionaire," is another exercise in low budget quirky indie filmmaking, but it has more to offer than her previous film, although it's not nearly as successful as her debut. The film opens with a low rent criminal couple - Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger) - and their offbeat daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), whose name provides for the film's funniest running joke, in the midst of their latest scheme. Old Dolio sneaks into the post office, opens a locker, places her thin arm through and steals mail from adjoining lockers.

The trio is barely surviving - they sleep in an abandoned office space located next to a car wash - the suds leak through the walls and they catch them in buckets - and they are constantly trying to sneak by their landlord, to whom they owe several months worth of rent. After a scheme involving a trip to New York City fails to bring in instant money, Robert and Theresa connect with an affable, charming and good looking young woman named Melanie (Gina Rodriguez) on the flight back.

For some inexplicable reason, the couple invites the Puerto Rican woman in on their schemes, which doesn't exactly please Old Dolio, although she knows her parents will likely end up scamming the new partner anyway. Melanie contributes her own ideas. Her work involves visiting lonely elderly people, and she suggests stealing some small items from their homes that they might not miss.

At the center of the story is Old Dolio's many neuroses - mostly stemming from the fact that she doesn't know whether her parents love her as their child or merely see her as another partner in their criminal schemes. They always insist on splitting everything three ways in a matter of fact manner. Also, romantic feelings - occasionally reciprocated, other times one sided - develop between several characters, making matters more complicated.

"Kajillionaire" has its share of moments - occasionally funny, sometimes moving - but the film shares some of the problems with July's previous film, "The Future." It often feels as if it's trying too hard to be twee, even though it's closer in quality to "Me and You and Everyone We Know," and lays pretty hard on the quirky elements, especially Old Dolio's often erratic and bizarre behavior - a scene in which she displays ecstatic joy after an earthquake in a convenient store is, well, something.

I can't quite recommend the picture, although there are elements to like. There's good camaraderie among the cast, there are enough funny bits to keep it entertaining and Rodriguez gives a scene stealing performance as Melanie, who seems to stick with this motley crew because she could use the money, doesn't have many friends and doesn't have much else to do.

Wood has a more challenging performance as Old Dolio, a young woman who has been denied much human affection from her family and seems to be lost inside the oversized track suits she often dons and the long stringy hair that hides her face. It's the type of performance that could slip into self parody - and the screenplay occasionally threatens to do so - but Wood manages to keep it on track.

Ultimately, "Kajillionaire" feels a little too manufactured in its oddness, and an ending that is meant to be sweet comes off as unexpected and slightly random. But there are some elements here that work, so I'd describe July's third film as a flawed one, but of interest to fans of the director's work and those who enjoy offbeat narratives.