I always thought it was remarkable that I liked Miranda July’s previous films, “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and “The Future,” considering her vibe of hippie New Age whimsicality is usually a turnoff for me. Well, my luck ran out here, as I found “Kajillionaire” insufferable.
And it sounds so good! It’s about a family of low-rent grifters in Los Angeles, with Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger as the disheveled parents, Evan Rachel Wood as their daughter, named Old Dolio. Everything’s a hustle with this family. They love each other, more or less, but are not demonstrative: Old Dolio has little experience with affection, and is pleased when she makes a friend (Gina Rodriguez) who’s from outside her bubble. (Speaking of which, the family lives in the disused office of a factory that makes bubbles, called Bubbles, Inc.)
Many of the film’s peculiar details remind me of a Charlie Kaufman movie: the bubbles, the landlord who cries a lot because he has no emotional filter, the general good-natured weirdness. But we remain at arm’s length from Old Dolio and her parents. Their circumstances grow repetitive, and the quirkiness feels random and precious. (The cons they pull are not the entertaining kind.) By the time we arrive at the moral of the story — everyone shows love in their own way, and everyone can only be who they are — I’m begging for it to be over. The whole thing just didn’t work for me.
C (1 hr., 44 min.; )
