User reviews

I did enjoy this movie although I'm still not sure what it was about or what its point was.

Evan Rachel Ward painted an interesting character and delivered one of the best sight gag I've seen in a while. The one where they bending low under the fence so the land lord won't see them and she bends backwards. I don't know how she did it but it was pure 3 stooges comedy without the slapping. Loved it.

As mentioned by others the hand to mouth existence was a good and enlightening one. Each day required to get them to the next and so on.

I didn't think I was going to like Gina Rodriguez's character but she totally won me over. She made sense and earned her place and her ray of sunshine delivery and burdened with beauty world weariness was interesting too.

Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger), along with their grown daughter Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) are a "team of con artists" living on the fringes of society. The parents have raised their daughter to follow in their footsteps. This sounds like it could be the basis for an intense drama or even thriller. It could also be the basis for a wacky comedy or a family comedy or a dark comedy.

Set your expectations elsewhere. KAJILLIONAIRE is its own very unique, strange drama/comedy hybrid. I put "team of con artists" in quotations because these guys are TERRIBLE at what they do. They put A LOT of energy into their schemes yet things go wrong or the amount of return they expect is way above reality. They live on the fringes of society (in fact, they live in a crumbling office suite that is located next to a bubble factory [yes, a bubble factory] and each day they must get back to their home/office at the same time in order to clear away the bubbles that leak through the wall). They barely have enough money for food. Your first thought after spending 10 minutes with them is "if they just put this energy into a real job, they'd be fine." But the parents also are paranoid: the government is watching them, there are secret rays beaming at us through cell phones, etc. etc. These guys are nuts (I realize that's a very uncharitable and non-PC characterization, but believe me, watching the movie, you will have the same reaction.) And their adult child has been raised like this. Mistrusting. Living on the edge of the law. And without hugs and affection either. She's emotionally stunted, and even moves through the world with weird posture. She doesn't fit in. You can sense she's aware that she's in an unworkable and abnormal situation, but has no sense of a way out.

Into this strange, fringe family comes Melanie (Gina Rodriquez), a vibrant, flashy, energetic but also troubled young lady who develops a fascination with the family and wants to join in on their con artist ways. She's a natural at the work, but she's also living on a different wavelength. Flashy when they are quiet. Ballsy when they are cowardly. And affectionate. At first, it's the parents that are entertained by her (and Old Dolio is alarmed by her). Yet, these relationships are forced to develop in new ways because of Melanie's intrusion.

The PLOT of the film is almost beside the point. It's the relationships that matter. Lots of things happen in the movie, but there's never a strong sense of a beginning, middle and end. And this gives the film a highly rambling quality, which coupled with these very strange people, makes for a tough movie viewing experience. We're not quite sure how our loyalties should lie (or if we should even forge any). Writer/director Miranda July has made the quirkiest movie I've seen in a long time. Sometimes its a playful quirkiness that can make for a bit of fun. Sometimes it feels quirky just for the sake of it, and this deadens the pace of the film at times. The tone of the movie is very challenging; a tightrope walk. July and her cast aren't always 100% successful in staying on the rope.

Yet the movie offers plenty of rewards for the patient viewer. When Melanie hits the scene, the carefully constructed strangeness of the central family is blown apart and the film is nearly completely unpredictable at this point. You have the chance to really DISCOVER what happens next, not just sit there and expect the events to unfold in a certain way. These characters are so odd it is almost impossible to guess what they will think, say or do next. And that almost complete uncertainty is its own reward. And the performances are stellar too. Jenkins and Winger are old pros and are a hoot to watch. Rodriquez (who brought so much optimistic energy to Jane The Virgin) explodes on the screen...she was a perfect casting choice. Bubbly and upbeat is SO different than what the others are, it is just fun to see how she causes ripples upon ripples. And Evan Rachel Wood is fascinating. Her voice and mannerisms are unique, and getting to watch her emotionally stunted character at least think about perhaps blossoming just a little is really the true joy of this film. The movie hinges on her ability to pull off the job of taking a very strange character and making her believable. She sticks the landing 99%; and the end of the movie is a quiet but powerful treat.

This is a challenging movie. Slow paced (especially the first 30 minutes). Weird. Characters we don't immediately recognize or empathize with. Sounds like a recipe for a poor evening of movie-watching. But in the end, I was oddly exhilarated. The payoff was more emotional than I expected; July planted the seeds of empathy and we didn't quite know it until suddenly they sprouted. A nice surprise!

I think this is the first time i disagree with the general consensus. The film was slow but it delivers with the plot. The character development was on point and the acting by Evan Rachel wood carried the movie most of the time. It's a bittersweet movie and while not perfect i think it's one lf my favourite to come out this year. Obviously it's not for everyone.

I confess the main reason I looked forward to this quirky movie is Evan Rachel Wood, I have been a big fan, she is good in everything and especially good in quirky roles (as she was in "Whatever Works"). She is really good here as the 26-yr-old daughter living as a 3-member team with her parents. They named her Old Dolio and the story explains that quite interestingly.

Just as a family of deer or elephants spend most of their waking hours foraging for food, this 3-some does just that, food and money just to meet expenses, with no regard for where it comes from. Running any number of scams. And Old Dolio, who seems to be played as a high-functioning autistic, accepts her lot in life.

Until another young lady comes into their lives, after getting to know Old Dolio seems bent on breaking her out of the emotional chains and towards a more normal life.

This is NOT a mainstream movie, and the very skewed IMDb reviews indicate that. In fact my wife gave up after about one-third of the movie, the quirkiness did not appeal to her at all. I stuck with it, things eventually come to a decent resolution of sorts, but it is not the kind of movie that I prefer. But I must give credit to the actors, all do a very good job.

Watched it at home on DVD from my public library. No "making of" extras.

Don't bother with the negative reviews for this one on here. That is if you're not too picky and can enjoy a movie without the urge of being too critical all the time. Kajillionaire is certainly not a bad movie, it's different and sometimes a bit weird, but it's definitely entertaining. The plot is about a disfunctional (or not) family that tries to get by using inventive scams to gather some money. Nothing they will get rich of, just a bunch of lowlife scams that are funny to watch. The family is played by Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger (which I didn't recognize) and Evan Rachel Wood. The whole crew did a good job. Kajillionaire might not be an award winning movie but it's good enough for a good movie night.

There's no getting away from it: Kajillionaire is an odd film. At first, it seems like a movie made for the sake of being weird, but as its story unfolds, you begin to see the method to Miranda July's madness, with an ultimately touching, bittersweet tale of personal independence making for a memorable watch.

First things first, if you're not party to a little bit of eccentricity and dry humour, you might find Kajillionaire rather inaccessible at first. Undeniably, the film struggles to find its feet in an eye-catching but admittedly dull opening act, as we follow the strange day-to-day exploits of a family of scam artists.

Evan Rachel Wood, Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins are fantastic in those roles, but there's very little to their characters early on, and it takes a while for Kajillionaire to really grab you with any real dramatic depth.

Fortunately, things take a turn for the better with the arrival of Gina Rodriguez, who brings a little bit of sense to an otherwise totally bizarre world. The film retains its offbeat sense of humour, but to have that grounded perspective with Rodriguez's excellent performance really helps you to find an in with this family, and the story begins to work off that really nicely.

Unfolding in thoroughly engaging fashion from then on, Kajillionaire deals with a range of interesting and sobering themes including poverty, neglect, abuse, all with a tinge of odd, dark humour to make it that little bit easier to stomach. Admittedly, the film's stranger side does occasionally undermine some of its more serious ideas, but without that charisma, it would likely have been a far less interesting watch.

Kajillionaire really comes good in its final act, however, where it begins to push the boat in terms of weirdness, but also in real, challenging drama. The run to the finish here features some of the movie's oddest moments, but also some of its most affecting and heart-wrenching ones, as we follow Evan Rachel Wood as she begins to discover the world for herself - away from her parents' unique worldview.

Along with Rodriguez, Wood is really fantastic and brings an impressive dramatic dynamic to a film that can occasionally feel a little emotionally opaque. Again, its themes aren't quite as hard-hitting because of its oddity, but there is real, affecting drama in the film's final stages, and that really caps it off in impressive fashion.

Overall, I liked Kajillionaire. It's not a perfect film, and perhaps doesn't manage to use its capacity for eccentricity to full effect, but there's still a worthy story to be heard here. With great performances, interesting themes and unique humour, it's a memorable, if not undeniably odd watch.

A delightfully weird movie directed by --- no surprises there! --- Miranda July.

This is the kind of movie that could never succeed without actors who know how to play the material just right, so let's start with Richard Jenkins and the unrecognizable Debra Winger, shall we? Could these two be any better? They play a married couple (or at least a couple) who try to live off the grid but in the middle of Los Angeles, a tricky business. They have all sorts of conspiracies about how the government, big business, etc. is trying to mind control people, so they don't do things like shop in stores, have an online presence, bathe, things like that. Instead, they spend every waking moment coming up with cockamamie schemes to steal and rob whatever they can. They're raising their daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) in this environment, and things seem to be going ok, or as ok as such a situation could ever be, when the family dynamic is upset by the addition of a normal person from the actual world (Gina Rodriguez) who wakes Wood up to all the ways her parents have failed to show her love or even affection.

If you are the kind of viewer who demands realism from your movies, this one will try your patience. There are at least a couple of events in this film (like what happens to Rodriguez's apartment, and those of you who've seen it know what I'm talking about) that not just strain credibility but try mighty hard to entirely break it. But the thing is, they don't. They feel credible within the world July creates in her movie, a world that's just a hair out of kilter with the world as we actually know it. And for me, everything worked.

Well, almost everything. I didn't love the lesbian themes that become increasingly prominent as the movie progresses, not because I have a problem with lesbian themes in general, but rather because they didn't feel well integrated into this particular story. But the movie is about loving and being loved in return, and there are all kinds of love, so in the end that too mostly worked for me.

Evan Rachel Wood is sensational, but this movie is stolen by, of all people, Gina Rodriguez. Who would ever have thought?

One of 2020's standout movies.

Grade: A

The film is a little strange and often doesn't make a lot of sense but ,none the less, it is watchable and does draw you in.

The characters are OK and just about believable but overall the piece of the film is slow and it lacks a bit of direction.

Worth a watch but don't have high expectations.

Dreadful film. Bad on so many levels. The dialogue is inane...when it exists. The storyline and the various subplots simply don't mix. And it's ultimately about spending an hour and a half with miserable unbelievable characters. It's hard to imagine how this movie got made. Harder still to understand how it got released. How bad was it? Well, the characters violate every motivational impulse they have to do things just to keep the movie moving along. The tight lipped conspirators suddenly tell complete strangers their plans. Epiphanies happen in the dark. And though it all, loathsome behavior is piled on loathsome behavior without a hint as to why or how the perpetrators chose to live this way. A gruesome film. I gave it a two instead of a one because the two adult leads were handled well. Avoid this film. It's the visual equivalent of food poisoning.

I was more than a little sceptical having read the one star reviews. This is not laugh out loud comedy, more of a drama really. I and my wife in our 60's just loved this quirky movie. It was so well acted I think its Oscar worthy. I can understand all those people who need belly laughter humour. But yeah I nearly gave it 10 stars

Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) has been trained by her parents, Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger), to live a life of petty crimes and scams. While on a round to NYC to do an insurance scam, Robert and Theresa become taken with fellow passenger Melanie (Gina Rodriguez). They take her in as a part of the family and part of their criminal crew.

I'm fascinated with this family up to the point of Melanie. I'm fascinated and also infuriated by ERW's performance as Old Dolio. She is so quiet and lacking in agency. Quite frankly, I'm in love with her choice for a voice. At some point, Melanie takes up space. That's not to say that Melanie isn't interesting. I have complicated feelings about this movie. Some of this unforgettable and fascinating while other parts are too frustrating.

I couldn't hear half the dialogue, it was mostly mumbling and the film felt as though the director had just sad ad-lib the whole script. Long pauses and timing that felt flat. Some good ideas for scenes but not executed well. The father role was played well but the other roles just seemed extremely boring. The daughter role seemed to entail talking in a low mundane mumbled voice and didn't project as they assumed it would. It could have been good if the acting was more natural but sadly it wasn't.

The toxic relationship between the daughter and her parents is depressing. Melanie brings some life and hope into that fortunately. I thought this film was rather more tragic than funny. It left me with a mixed impression.

I found it to be a very sad film overall, despite the happy ending. It's weird, even wacky at times, but every new thing you learn about Old Dolio is another stab in the heart. The film is almost surreal at times, still, the more you think about the scenes which could be construed as funny, the more visible the underlined themes become. While the same situations would get a laugh in another film, here they speak volumes about their unorthodox and dysfunctional family, about the lonely life Old Dolio has lived, all the psychological issues she has developed etc...

For me this movie was a unique experience. I can't think of anything similar I've seen.

A beautiful mess of emotions and storytelling that pierces the heart in its way, KAJILLIONAIRE was all of that and some more. in this wacky and frankly out of sync delivery one tend to lose track of time and reality and just enjoy what's on display, this film offers something quite rare, the ability to see yourself and project your own feeling into it, and that is just amazing, it reflects so many aspects of life no matter what you do or where you live, it's quite universal. I believe that no medium except film can offer such a specific feeling or a style of life, I think this film encapsulates the never ending movie magic that leaves you unbelievably fulfilled.

"Kajillionaire" wanted to be many things - a comedy, a heist film, a drama, a coming-of-age tale, an introspective character piece and more. It failed at being every single one of those things. Gina Rodriguez and the scene at the old man's house were the only good things about it. The parents had one trait shared between them and that was "being awful people", whilst the daughter had one trait and that was "needing therapy of the psychiatric and speech kind". It was slow, it was pretentious, it was boring. And it shouldn't have been billed as a comedy, let alone released in cinemas. Bad film, bad time.

The positive reviews understand the emotions of this movie. The negative reviews don't. I thought it was a very unique movie, which is better than the same old fake Hollywood reboots. It's artsy. It's quirky. It's emotional. Evan Rachel Wood was amazing. Perhaps it's love or hate. I loved it.

No, obviously, I wasn't raised by a thugs, but psychopaths. And I can imagine my parents acting like this, no mercy, no dialog, no doubts. This movie, as I understood it, trying to show how difficult to cure scars that such kind of treatment leave, how devastating could be parents indifference in a forming of personality and how painful to escape from that awful relationships.

Imagine this: A movie following the exploits and scams of a family of scamming low-lifes... that sounds really interesting right? Well, they somehow managed to take that pretty interesting premise and make basically NOTHING out of it... the movie isn't funny, and it has very little intrigue, and extremely little drama, and very little adventure.... so it basically has nothing that a movie should have. The movie just kind of drags its feet for 1hour30minutes and then at the very end exhales a very agonizing and labored last breath... it's not really worth watching tbh, not even once! I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, unless you're a massive Evan Rachel Wood fan.

The cast gave me a feeling that I would like Miranda July's "Kajillionaire". It didn't disappoint. This story of a family of con artists has all sorts of surprises. Seeing their living situation, it's no surprise that they've had to resort to petty crime; I bet that a lot of people have had no other choice.

I wish that there were more movies like this and fewer movies whose entire purpose is to show Tom Cruise narrowly escaping all danger. Richard Jenkins (Nate Sr. On "Six Feet Under"), Debra Winger, Evan Rachel Wood and Gina Rodriguez put on excellent performances, with great direction and cinematography to boot. It won't be for everyone, but if you're in for a cerebral time in front of the TV, it'll be for you.

This sort of material has been done before, after 15 minutes I was out, I struggled, it's a style done 10 years ago. Nothing refreshing.