Movie Review: Who Wants To Be A “Kajillionaire?”
I remember seeing Captain Fantastic and being charmed by its very real question: How do you raised a good, smart kid, especially in a society that doesn’t really know the route to do that or desire it for all children? Out September 25, in Kajillionaire, writer/ director Miranda July sweetly approaches that tough question when the child is “grown up,” which then makes her audience ask, “How accountable are you, when you are older, for what your family did to you when you were younger? Evan Rachel Wood deepens her voice, stiffens her body, and makes a transformation as Old Dolio that literally says, “I am repressed and have been for a very long time. ”
Being a parent is a lot. You can feel really lost in trying to raise a person that is “better” than you and can survive without you. The very notion feels contrasting because this is a world that scams, steals, and systemizes the latter two if you have enough power to get away with it. This endangers the rest of us that don’t always know what it is to combat a “system” without joining it but never being apart from it. For Debra Winger’s Theresa Dyne and Richard Jenkins’ Robert Dyne , their daughter, Old Dolio, is a survivor, but meeting Gina Rodriguez’s Melanie makes her question whether she can be a lover?
Winger and Jenkins are fantastically terrible. (lol!) They are the perfect, worst parents Old Dolio could ask for because there is no tenderness to their bond, and they truly are survivalists, even though they are barely surviving. For all their tiny scams and penny pinches, they still cannot afford their 500 dollar rent. Yet, they live in a constant mode of SCAM! Spending their days trying to take a sliver of someone else’s money pie.This drives the film’s humor: they are a pair of cranky, disgruntled old folks that aptly contrast Melanie’s bright hopefulness, which, eventually, attracts Old Dolio. In Old Dolio, they raised a partner in crime, but the arrival of Melanie reveals that she has no human attachment or adeptness.
KAJILLIONAIRE – Official Trailer [HD] – In Theaters September 25
Rodriguez is, once again, a charismatic performer. It is hard to make anyone joining a “potential heist spree” against elders look compassionate or, at least, strike a sense empathy in viewers. Yet, Rodriguez’s Melanie and the elder Dynes are two sides of the same coin: economic and thus emotional frustration. When you work hard and hardly get paid, you will, probably, look like Old Dolia hunching over the ground as she follows her parents’ without question. There is a certain, sentimental vacancy that builds within you as you realize, you never go up or even anywhere. Melanie, at first, is wide-eyed by the Dynes, but she starts to realize they are not intelligent criminals filled with finesse and nor is she or Old Dolio. Instead, they are people that wish for more in life, but one party, the elder Dynes, define “more” as money, which contrasts how Melanie and Old Dolio will define it through each other. The chemistry between Rachel Wood and Rodriguez makes me so romantic because it approaches love as a teacher.
KAJILLIONAIRE Clip – Tool (2020) Richard Jenkins
Miranda July’s movie is hilarious, colorful, and eccentric; taking the mundane of being a social outcast and making it a visual art-form. This visuality comes from Rachel Wood’s physical transformation, even throughout the film, as a person so tightly-wound like an uncorrected child. Throughout the 104 minutes, Wood goes from a walnut to a cracked walnut, which is growth when you see how regressed Old Dolio can be in human behavior. Yet, she is wise or, at least, wise enough to understand that even when you can’t enjoy money, you can always enjoy people. In fact, you will probably like them more. Kajillionaire comes out in theaters September 25.
