movie review kajillionaire

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, kajillionaire.

Now streaming on:

Her unconventional stories and eccentric humor might suggest otherwise at first glance, but there is always profoundly heavy stuff at the heart of Miranda July ’s work. Our cavernous hunger for meaningful connections lies beneath the quirky indie guise of the rapturously funny “ Me and You and Everyone We Know .” Existential notes on yearning for purpose charge the idiosyncrasies of “ The Future .” And one doesn’t need to look much further than everything July has been doing virtually and on social media, especially since the Covid-19 quarantine started in earnest back in spring, for further evidence into her chief creative concerns. By inviting crowds into her process in small doses, the fiercely original multi-disciplinary artist has been out there to examine humankind’s consequential bonds—how individuals forge those ties in the absence of physical contact, what they might get out of them, and why we all need others like air and water.

July’s best and most mature work to date, the often hilarious and gradually heartbreaking “Kajillionaire” almost recapitulates the writer/director’s above-mentioned experiential artistic interests, digging deep into the world of a twenty-something who has been consistently denied any form of sincere human touch and connection her entire life. She is the awkwardly postured Los Angeles dweller Old Dolio (a sneakily affecting Evan Rachel Wood ), sporting baggy jackets, peculiar track suits and a longer-than necessary mid-parted hair over her permanently sullen face and slouchy shoulders. Stuck in a cycle of petty crime with her equally bizarre parents Theresa ( Debra Winger ) and Robert ( Richard Jenkins )—of course they are bizarre, having named their child “Old Dolio” as if to punish her from birth—the helpless daughter cheats her way from one small-time theft to the next, sharing all the minor gains with her folks three-ways, without attaining a shred of intimacy or term of endearment in return.

July doesn’t drop in any clues here and there to help us understand when or why exactly the grifter duo Theresa and Robert chose to lead this stick-it-to-the-man lifestyle, or how they became so incapable of showing affection to their offspring whom they seem heartlessly detached from. Instead, the filmmaker earns the viewer’s trust and consent straightaway through her confident sense of rhythm and sure-handed world-building. Seen through Sebastian Winterø's fluid lens, July’s trio of characters move through, blend in, and interact with their surroundings in such a smooth and diligently fabricated fashion that we completely buy their unusual authenticity from the get-go, all the way from the opening moments of the film when the family launches into one of their routine post office heists. With hysterical steps involving a somersault here and a tumble there (supposedly to avoid security cameras), the clumsily willowy Old Dolio barges into the building just to rob the mailboxes adjacent to theirs for things as worthless as a tie. 

Elsewhere, their elastic motions keep them away from the eyes of a desperate landlord, a weak-willed but kindly man who gives his poor tenants the final ultimatum to pay their overdue rent in a few weeks. Not that the light-starved residence in question is habitable by any standards. Located inside a factory-like space, its walls frequently leak a pink, soapy substance that the trio regularly collects in buckets with such a sense of duty and normalcy that the whole scene looks like a weird art installation that satirizes the impossibility of urban living. (Notable production design by Sam Lisenco somehow manages to make all such oddities look effortless.) Still, with no intention to lose their cheap accommodation, the family plans their next “big” con, aiming to scam an airline for insurance money on lost luggage.

Enter Melanie (an effervescent Gina Rodriguez , the film’s secret weapon), a bubbly and curious personality that swiftly gets attracted to the trio’s unorthodox ways in order to shake things up a bit in her own square existence. Everything that Old Dolio isn’t—well-groomed, assertively feminine, independent, and surrounded by warmth in her own family—Melanie first awakens a sense of jealousy in Old Dolio, followed by a realization of all the tender, emotionally reassuring and even sexual sensations the young woman has been missing out on the whole time. Could Melanie possibly become someone to validate her, like a friend, sister, or maybe even lover? Could she retroactively grant Old Dolio that maternal compassion that the poor recluse only saw at a parenting class that she once attended to make a few quick bucks?

Where July takes the story—an overwhelmingly heartrending and unexpected place—might just wreck you, especially in the ongoing days of quarantine where we’re all taking notice of the real currencies of the world, like a hug, a passionate kiss or a word as simple as honey from a special someone. Admittedly, July shortchanges Melanie a touch—we feel slightly cheated when film’s MVP doesn’t prove to have that satisfying a journey of her own. Still, the chemistry between Wood’s deep-voiced, reluctant outcast and Rodriguez’s scrappy, vivacious go-getter is so divine that their joint passage is what ultimately sells and counts in “Kajillionaire.” By the end, it all feels like life-affirming stuff.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

Now playing

Knox Goes Away

Robert daniels.

A Bit of Light

Peyton robinson.

State of Consciousness

Simon abrams.

Amelia’s Children

Mary & George

Cristina escobar.

Wicked Little Letters

Sheila o'malley, film credits.

Kajillionaire (2020)

Rated R for some sexual references/language.

106 minutes

Evan Rachel Wood as Old Dolio

Gina Rodriguez as Melanie

Debra Winger as Theresa

Richard Jenkins as Robert

Mark Ivanir as Stovik

• Miranda July

Cinematographer

• Sebastian Winterø
• Jennifer Vecchiarello
• Emile Mosseri

Latest blog posts

The Future of the Movies, Part 3: Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt

11:11 - Eleven Reviews by Roger Ebert from 2011 in Remembrance of His Transition 11 Years Ago

A Man Goes to the Movies: An Appreciation of Roger Ebert's Top 10 Lists

Netflix Reimagines Patricia Highsmith's Timeless Character in the Chilling Ripley

Find anything you save across the site in your account

“Kajillionaire,” Reviewed: Miranda July’s Astounding Metaphorical Vision of a World Out of Whack

By Richard Brody

Imagination cannot be quantified, but Miranda July nonetheless boldly tries to in her new film—starting with its title, “Kajillionaire.” It’s saying too little to credit July with more imagination than most filmmakers. More important, her formidable powers are distinctively cinematic—they aren’t limited to the conceits of screenwriting but run comprehensively through her movies, inflecting image, performance, sound, dialogue, music, the conception of character, and the very vision of the world. Like July’s 2011 film, “The Future,” “Kajillionaire” (which opens in theatres on Friday) is built on a cosmic scale, with personal suffering finding correlates—even effects—in enormous geological events with a metaphysical twist. Like “The Future,” “Kajillionaire” is a simple and linear story in which complexity arises from the radical expressiveness of more or less its every moment, and in which the elements of fantasy look deeply at fundamental realities. Just as “The Future” is one of the most discerning movies about the lives and loves of young idealists, “Kajillionaire” is a ferociously sharp-minded movie about parents and children, about families and their bonds, about family unity and its place in the world.

It’s the tale of the Dyne family, a trio of desperate scammers: Theresa (Debra Winger), Robert (Richard Jenkins), and their daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), who has been raised to be a scammer along with them, and whose very name—which isn’t even heard until late in the film—is the vestige of a scam. Unable to raise the rent on their strange and sordid unofficial apartment (an empty office in a rundown factory), they pursue one more scheme, and, along the way, Theresa and Robert lure an outsider—an optician’s young assistant, named Melanie (Gina Rodriguez)—to work with them and enter the family circle, sparking Old Dolio’s jealous resentment. Old Dolio has been raised with the toughest of love, with no discernible signs of affection and no childlike frippery. (She wears style-free and mismatched sweatshirts and pants; her hair hangs loosely down, untended; and her quasi-robotic voice reflects an upbringing without emotional expression or empathetic connection.) Yet the faux warmth with which Theresa and Robert welcome Melanie arouses Old Dolio’s yearning for some authentic parental warmth—and Melanie, with authentically warm feelings toward Old Dolio, engages in some manipulative behavior of her own, in the interest of her prospective friend.

The movie’s drama is built on an abstract and fantastic framework (Did Old Dolio ever go to school? Did her somewhat distinctive background arouse questions?), but a bare-bones synopsis hardly captures the florid displays and pointillistic touches with which July dramatically expands and exquisitely illuminates the action—the emotional power that arises from her large-scale inspirations along with her finely discerning, poignant sensitivity to the piercing power of offhand remarks and passing glances. It’s in these adornments, at both ends of the perceptual spectrum—the monumental and the flickering—that July turns an implausible fantasy into a work of emotional and intellectual realism.

Also like “The Future,” “Kajillionaire” is a story of the temptations of isolation and solitude in the name of independence. Yet “The Future” is built on the dramatic bedrock of simple, familiar, instantly recognizable situations and characters, a pair of thirtyish artists living on dull day jobs and pining for the time and the mental space to create in unencumbered freedom. By contrast, “Kajillionaire” is a narrative house of cards, with many tiny backstory details, dropped in along the way, that have to fit together just so in order for it to make any sense at all. The elaborate setup makes the movie very hard to describe—because nearly every detail is both a plot point that shouldn’t be spoiled and a giddy surprise that’s wondrous to experience. What’s more, it’s all too easy to dwell on July’s teeming, idiosyncratic contrivances at the expense of the strong ideas that energize them. July’s world-building, her creation of a wholly synthetic setup, is ingenious in and of itself, but its allegorical artifice is not at all divorced from the mind-bending pressures of the modern day. Rather, its surrealism is a way of facing present-day realities minus the political particulars that can hardly be addressed without screaming. “Kajillionaire” is a metaphorical vision of a world out of whack, and it sees the disturbances in a vicious cycle that links economic despair, embittered nostalgia, and wanton cruelty. July’s aesthetic imagination is inseparable from her empathetic curiosity and emotional urgency; it tempers a howl of anguish at a world of pain into a kind of cinematic music that unfolds it in nuanced detail and extends a hand of consolation, even offers a note of hope.

The Dynes’ main scheme is postal theft; Old Dolio somersaults outside the post-office door (as if avoiding detection) and, reaching deep into a post-office box that they rent, steals letters and packages from neighboring boxes. They don’t just pilfer merchandise and checks; they insinuate themselves into the lives of people whose names and addresses they harvest, and hand-deliver ostensibly “lost” merchandise in quest of rewards, or, with clever diversionary tactics, steal from them. But, at the start of the action, the family is desperate: they’re on the verge of eviction from their utterly inadequate housing, an empty office in a company called Bubbles, Inc., which actually makes bubbles. Their room leaks bubbles (they have to be there at specific times, to mop the overflow), but they pay only (!) five hundred dollars per month, which now they don’t have. They’re three months in arrears and cadge a two-week extension for their fifteen-hundred-dollar debt from the company’s owner (Mark Ivanir), whose comedically involuntary soft-heartedness is a natural fit for a suds-maker.

It’s Old Dolio who figures out the scam that will pull them through, with a payout of fifteen hundred and seventy-five dollars (a figure that turns into a sort of incantation, as does its divisibility into an even three-way split). Old Dolio, the virtually nameless child, is also something of an ageless child (though she’s revealed to be twenty-six). She is an equal of sorts to her parents but also their total dependent—even as, to a large extent, her parents depend on her (not least, for her skills as a forger). Theresa and Robert, called upon to justify their unsentimental ways, present them as egalitarian—they treated her like an adult, without the comforting illusions or delusions of childhood gaiety and frivolity. What’s more, they take for granted that their nurture follows her nature—that she utterly lacks the human feelings that others, such as Melanie, display. They’re wrong, of course; Old Dolio’s journey of self-discovery—aided by Melanie’s alert ruses—and self-differentiation from her parents is the movie’s core.

The Dynes are raw survivalists whose lives of crime keep them off the grid, where Robert wants them to be; he fears surveillance cameras, fears being traceable in any way by society at large, thinks that society at large is inherently corrupt and is run on addictions as much material as emotional. (He cites caffeine and sugar.) Father knows best: with contempt for what passes for ordinary life, he uses the very title of the film to belittle the widespread and delusional dreams of wealth which he thinks drive people to lead lives of quiet aspiration. (Spoiler alert: the real kajillions are love.)

“Kajillionaire,” no less than “The Future,” focusses on the extraordinary distances that some people have to go in order to achieve a measure of the ordinary—and to discover the sublimity, the exaltation that lurks undiscovered in that ordinariness. For July, the first mark of that ordinary sublimity is in the blithe cheer and ritual gaiety with which well-meaning parents attempt to adorn their children’s childhoods. (Old Dolio’s awakening to her own deprivation involves an accidental encounter with a deeply empathetic child-care specialist.) Theresa and Robert—in raising Old Dolio without frivolities, with an unsoftened, unsheathed sense of ferocious self-interest and an awareness of the softness and persuadability of others, all in the name of trust—replay varieties of Herman Melville’s “ The Confidence-Man .” They make the world their prey as they display, in their scuffling and desperate poverty, their superiority to easy marks, who are victimized by their drives for human connection.

“Kajillionaire” falls into the off-the-grid genre and the know-it-all subgenre (such as “ Captain Fantastic ”), in which parents take children into isolation not merely for the purpose of survival but in pursuit of an ideal that differs drastically from any that children are likely to acquire from peers, school, or media. Yet, for July, this bargain—shattering a child’s psyche, shattering the bonds of civic trust, pursuing the mighty recognition and urgency of self-transformation and, in the process, changing the world—is literally cosmic. In “The Future,” the cosmic element involves the stopping of time and tides; in “Kajillionaire” (aptly, for a movie set in Los Angeles), it’s earthquakes, which rumble with a monitory terror for the Dynes alone, and an unnamable (for spoilers) darkness that’s filled with stars.

“Kajillionaire” is a death-haunted movie, in which the awesome presence of ultimate things is matched by the tiny thread of life—the mighty emotional power of the seemingly minor moment, the vast weight of connection in a glance, a word, a touch. (Along with cosmic perturbances, there’s an infinitesimal superpower that Old Dolio discovers, in a moment of supreme tenderness which is also a supernova of overwhelming intimacy.) As in “The Future” (and as in the book “ It Chooses You ”), July finds the sublimity of the trivial in the quaint objects of petty commerce (there, the ads in the PennySaver magazine) and the personal connections to which they give rise—a sense of deep belonging through disposable banalities. Commercial banalities loom large in “Kajillionaire,” too—in the markers of Old Dolio’s smothered dreams and also in Theresa’s and Robert’s lost ones. (They, too, once relied on a similar, and similarly obsolete, form of commerce.) Unable to recapture lost, albeit modest, glories, the Dynes lay waste to the tenuous security and the trusting warmth of those who currently have it—and make sure to deprive Old Dolio of it, too, leaving her muted, submissive, dependent. The drama of her awakening, marked by frivolities as well as by revelations, reaches far beyond her family circle, into the world at large.

July conjures this immense tangle with rich, pugnacious dialogue, puckishly oblique compositions, and subtle gestural precision, which are most conspicuous in the lead actors’ performances. As the tyrannical patriarch who’s also a consummate con man, Jenkins shifts registers and tones virtuosically, going from scathing contempt to grandiose glad-handing, shameless cadging, and the nearly persuasive impersonation of a regular guy with a chilling, hairpin precision. As Theresa, living in his shadow, Winger smolders with destructive purpose and impacted rage, which she unleashes terrifyingly in a grand aria mocking maternal sentiment. Rodriguez endows Melanie—who’s armed with the firm background provided by her own loving mother—with a hearty exuberance that’s lined with an authentic strength of principle, and Wood achieves wonders of expressivity with a tamped-down neutrality that masks a volcano of unlived life. (Her performance is one of virtually choreographic posture.) Yet the playfulness, the teeming inventiveness, the idiosyncratic spin that “Kajillionaire” lends its large-scale forms and its intimate moments, its performances and its images, its perceptions and its inventions—though immensely surprising and stimulating—is the opposite of fun. It’s a furious cry of rage against the miseries of family life playing out in public, a glimmer of hard-won possibility wrenched from a world of woe.

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Kyle Chayka

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Monkey Man Link to Monkey Man
• The Beast Link to The Beast
• The Old Oak Link to The Old Oak

New TV Tonight

• Mary & George: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• Star Trek: Discovery: Season 5
• Sugar: Season 1
• American Horror Story: Season 12
• Loot: Season 2
• Parish: Season 1
• Lopez vs Lopez: Season 2
• The Magic Prank Show With Justin Willman: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• We Were the Lucky Ones: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Invincible: Season 2
• The Gentlemen: Season 1
• Palm Royale: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Ripley Link to Ripley
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

100 Best Free Movies on YouTube (April 2024)

Pedro Pascal Movies and Series Ranked by Tomatometer

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

TV Premiere Dates 2024

New Movies & TV Shows Streaming in April 2024: What To Watch on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and More

• Trending on RT
• The First Omen
• Play Movie Trivia

Kajillionaire Reviews

Wood somehow manipulates potential caricature into something fully alive.

Full Review | Feb 7, 2024

Miranda July’s talent as a storyteller lies in her ability to walk the fine line between pathos and fanciful comedy, and Kajillionaire is arguably her strongest work yet.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

There are few movies quite like Miranda July’s Kajillionaire. What begins as a movie about grifters and scam artists turns into one of the most achingly honest portrayals of loneliness ever made.

Boasting a character-driven narrative and a unique filmmaking style, Evan Rachel Wood and Gina Rodriguez share impressive chemistry, elevating their characters’ relationship, which is definitely the most captivating arc of the whole movie.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 24, 2023

Once again, July proves her skill for narrating original and moving stories that defy commercial conventions. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 12, 2023

Revealing and rebellious. Cheers to that. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Nov 1, 2022

Kajillionaire is a hilarious and heartfelt heist dramedy, led by an eccentric and enormously entertaining Evan Rachel Wood.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2022

For all of July's quirks and visual peculiarities, her brand of filmmaking fits an indie narrative structure that manages to be universal in its oddball specificity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 17, 2022

It's a heist film, but one so singular and beguiling in tone that to group it in with that genre would be misleading.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2021

Kajillionaire's exaltation of closeness gains heart-tugging resonance in our socially distanced world.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 25, 2021

A quirky, uplifting story that will make you appreciate the kindness and affection you receive from anyone who truly cares about you.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 24, 2021

Kajillionaire offers something different again. It's a strange, refreshingly unique movie that will leave viewers happier to have seen it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 17, 2021

Every minute of Kajillionaire, the latest quirky film from quirky filmmaker, actress, artist and writer Miranda July, is peculiar, specific, intentional and successful.

Full Review | Jun 17, 2021

Kajillionaire is a keenly empathetic look at kindness and intimacy, neglect and emotional violence, loneliness and trust, prettily packaged in brightly coloured absurdism.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2021

There are aspects of this film that remind me of 'The Royal Tenenbaums' with its dark, subversive humor, headed up by Richard Jenkins, who plays a perfect scoundrel. All four main characters are well fleshed out and quite quirky.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 8, 2021

It's rare for a film to feel so rich, so unique and so completely the sum of its parts, but July's third feature manages that feat.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2021

Kajillionaire gets at least a mild recommendation because it is so far from standard fare. In a world packed full of formulaic films, many of them reboots, sequels and prequels, this almost surely is one you haven't seen before.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 21, 2021

Kajillionaire might be [Miranda July's] most accessible and rewarding film.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 17, 2021

Kajillionaire is funny, original, sad and singular. In other words, it's Peak Miranda July.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 15, 2021

Bleak and funny and still, somehow, flickering with hope.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 15, 2021

‘Kajillionaire’: Film Review

One of independent cinema's most singular voices, Miranda July infuses this absurdist satire about a dysfunctional family of scam artists with insights into what it means to be human.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

• ‘The First Omen’ Review: A Decently Executed Prequel Pales Next to Superior ‘Immaculate’ 1 day ago
• ‘Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces’ Review: A Sprawling Portrait Splits the Comedian’s Career, Saving the Payoff for the Second Half 1 week ago
• ‘Riddle of Fire’ Review: Weston Razooli’s Wilderness-Set Debut Feels Like Child’s Play, in a Good Way 2 weeks ago

The world is a weird place. Miranda July knows that, but the rest of us sometimes forget. Or maybe we just don’t want to admit how bizarre it is that society more or less agrees that back rubs and hot tubs and flavored chips and McRibs are an appropriate reward for a bazillion years of human development. It’s not until you visit a foreign country, or watch a foreigner trying to make sense of your own, that it starts to register just how weird it all is. That’s what artists do: Like Martian anthropologists, they see things differently, and they reflect them back to us in such a way that we can too.

With “ Kajillionaire ,” July devises a fresh strategy to offer an outsider’s perspective, focusing on 26-years-young Old Dolio ( Evan Rachel Wood ), the oddly named daughter in a family of scammers — a dysfunctional “scamily,” if ever there was one. A metaphor for homeschooling gone horribly wrong, Old Dolio has been raised so far outside the acceptable mold of American parenting that it was all bound to backfire one day. Now, over the course of two eventful weeks, Old Dolio slow-motion short-circuits, finally expressing the desire to experience all that she’s been denied.

That description is completely inadequate, emphasizing plot over the truly unorthodox inner journey July puts Wood’s character through, but if it’s enough to get you in the door, then maybe this label-defying movie can work its magic. It would probably be safer to pitch “Kajillionaire” as an original riff on the tried-and-true con-job genre. Every day, the Dynes — Robert ( Richard Jenkins ) and Theresa ( Debra Winger ), with Old Dolio in tow — pull from a playbook of small-time hustles, designed to make a quick buck at other people’s expense.

The opportunistic L.A. trio live in a low-rent office building next door to a bubble factory, where it’s incumbent on them to clear giant clouds of pink foam that leak in through the ceiling several times a day (for the record, the movie isn’t nearly as quirky as that detail makes it sound). As a kind of existential commentary, this absurdist chore could be a variation on the nonstop stream of sand that floods the house in “Woman in the Dunes,” or maybe it’s just a quirky idea July had one day.

As in “Me and You and Everyone We Know” — where July also explored the universal human craving for connection — the wryly observant storyteller embraces a sense of everyday eccentricity while keeping her film’s feet firmly on the ground. Sure, the tone is unusual: neutral for a time, as July entrusts composer Emile Mosseri (“The Last Black Man in San Francisco”) to carbonate the cocktail. But frequent surprises aside, it’s never too out there for audiences to relate. Think Todd Solondz without all the rape jokes. There’s also a queer twist most people won’t see coming, distracted as they’re sure to be by the family’s criminal shenanigans.

From the vantage of a law-abiding citizen like yourself, the Dynes’ pathetic schemes will probably seem like more work than a real job would require. For instance, when Old Dolio wins three round-trip tickets to New York, the family jet there and back just to claim that one of their suitcases went missing in transit, angling to collect $1,575 in lost-bag insurance. (Heck, it beats throwing themselves in front of cars, as in Oshima’s “Boy,” or hawking Bibles to widows à la “Paper Moon,” a movie that “Kajillionaire” kinda, sorta resembles.)

On the flight home, they meet Melanie (Gina Rodriguez). If small talk were an Olympic sport, she’d have three gold medals. Melanie is what you might call a “credulous” person. She wants to believe, but then, most people do — except for the Dynes, of course. As grifters, they’re so committed to misleading others that they’ve lost the capacity to trust. It’s a sad thing, such cynicism, but it’s all that Old Dolio’s ever known. Determined not to be “false, fakey people” to their own child, these two clearly unfit parents deprived their daughter of a “normal childhood” — as if such thing even exists.

July understands that most of us measure our upbringing against some Platonic ideal of how we think others were raised. When the gap is great enough, there can be enormous resentment, which many spend their adult lives over-compensating to correct. It’s a normal part of human development for offspring to declare their independence, defining their identities in opposition to the people who raised them. Old Dolio’s going through a version of that process in “Kajillionaire,” even if July’s script never comes right out and identifies that theme.

At Cinefile Video in Los Angeles, the staff have filed July’s previous feature, 2011’s “The Future,” in their “Coming of Age” section. Not the obvious choice, but where would you put it? Turns out, “Kajillionaire” is an unconventional coming-of-age story too, though it has enough of a crime-movie dimension to amuse those unenthused by July’s more poetic subtext. After hitting it off with the Dynes on the plane, Melanie casually inserts herself into their midst, proposing a creative scheme of her own. She works a demoralizing mall job, where the elderly customers routinely invite her into their homes. Her idea: take them up on the offer, and look for potentially valuable antiques that they could steal and resell.

Far-fetched as it sounds, that plan is actually less strange than the one that inspired July’s “It Chooses You,” a book-length photo essay in which the artist (film is just one of the ways July expresses herself) visited folks who’d listed unusual items for sale in the PennySaver classifieds. In “Kajillionaire,” the characters make two such house calls. The first is funny, but the second comes from a far deeper place. A lonely old man lies in bed, awaiting death. To humor him (while buying time to find his checkbook), Melanie and her new friends noisily pretend to be a normal family.

There’s that word again: “normal.” Most of us will never know how others live, but Old Dolio has been starting to wonder, and this act of entering strangers’ homes — of judging their decorating choices and rooting through their things — underscores what’s been missing from her experience. (Props to production designer Sam Lisenco for making these spaces seem so plausible.) Interacting with the old man triggers something in Old Dolio. It’s the point in this consistently unpredictable drama when she begins to reject her upbringing.

There are other contributing factors — a “Positive Parenting” class, a series of small earthquakes, along with feelings for Melanie she can’t quite explain — that force Old Dolio out of the nest. In her own words, the poor gal “doesn’t know anything about tender feelings.” And when it comes to reversing the brainwashing (she’s like a victim of Stockholm syndrome), she hardly knows where to begin. It all builds, in a wonderfully roundabout way, to one of the great romances in cinema history — although maybe only we weirdos who identify as Miranda July fans will recognize it as such.

Knowing July’s work may help to appreciate Wood’s performance. The “Thirteen” star channels the childlike monotone July uses in her one-woman shows, masking Old Dolio’s emotions for much of the film. Rodridguez is the real revelation here, serving as the first person who’s ever really “seen” Old Dolio. Her character understands that the Dynes are dishonest, but she allows herself to be cautiously vulnerable all the same, enabling her new friend to find herself. In the end, “Kajillionaire” is less about the con than it is the connection, and we’re all the richer as a result.

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 26, 2020. Running time: 104 MIN.

• Production: (Int'l sales: United Talent Agency, Los Angeles.) Producers: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Youree Henley. Executive producers: Jillian Longnecker, Brad Pitt, Megan Ellison.
• Crew: Director, writer: Miranda July. Camera: Sebastian Winterø. Editor: Jennifer Vecchiarello. Music: Emile Mosseri.
• With: Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger , Patricia Belcher, Kim Estes, Da'vine Joy Randolph, Rachel Redleaf.

More From Our Brands

J cole brought a knife to a gunfight on ‘7 minute drill’, bmw is bringing a 700 hp sport wagon to the u.s., bronny james declares for nba draft, enters transfer portal, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, bold & beautiful reveals that the ‘late’ sheila carter is alive and kicking, verify it's you, please log in.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Kajillionaire review – quirky crime caper

The unloved daughter of scam artists is led astray by pancakes and dancing in Miranda July’s idiosyncratic comedy drama

A family of oddball grifters living on the margins of Los Angeles begin to fracture after they befriend the comparatively normal Melanie (a magnetic Gina Rodriguez) during an attempted lost luggage scam. With its cosmically charged earthquakes and cast of lovable weirdos led by 26-year-old Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), the third feature from multidisciplinary artist Miranda July is unlikely to convert those who find her idiosyncrasies affected rather than charming. A key location is a bubble factory that leaks glittery, cotton-candy sludge.

Yet on relationships, July remains as perceptive as ever. She has a gift with actors, locating humanity in unexpected places; Da’Vine Joy Randolph is inspired casting as a masseuse who hovers her hands above a skittish Old Dolio’s knotted back. Old Dolio, named after a homeless man who won the lottery, is a ticking timebomb of repression, masked by a low monotone and a curtain of hair. Old Dolio’s mother (Debra Winger) rations affection as she does money, insisting her daughter “doesn’t know anything about tender feelings”. And so Melanie tenderly takes it upon herself to introduce her new friend to pancakes, dancing, pet names and intimacy. The tremors that Old Dolio grits her teeth through suggest an internal shift is taking place.

• Miranda July
• The Observer
• Comedy films
• Crime films

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Politics Explained
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Kajillionaire review: This beautiful, deeply empathetic film is Miranda July’s best yet

A moving curio about a family of grifters, it perfectly balances the director’s irrepressible earnestness with a psychoanalytical need to understand how human bonds are formed and maintained, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Get our the life cinematic email for free, thanks for signing up to the the life cinematic email.

Dir: Miranda July. Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Debra Winger, Gina Rodriguez, Richard Jenkins. 12A cert, 105 mins

Miranda July ’s films are miniature fairytales played out of tune – whimsical and sweet, with a tartness right at their centre. In her 2005 debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know , she introduced us to the concept of “))<>((”, an emoticon that translates to “pooping back and forth, forever”. In 2011’s The Future , she provided the shrill, gargling voice of a sick cat adopted by an emotionally static couple. In her latest, Kajillionaire , a moving curio about a family of grifters, she keeps circling back to the same image: a line of pastel pink soap suds, dripping down the wall of a basement office – a daily occurrence for her protagonists, who have set up camp underneath a bubble factory.

The world inside of July’s head looks essentially like our own. It’s a little brighter, perhaps; a little more symmetrical. But emotions work differently here – they’re repressed, yes, but always scratching up at the surface like rats below the floorboards. Occasionally, they spill out in odd and arresting ways. The manager of the bubble factory can’t stop crying. “I have no filters!” he declares, in between whinnying sobs. Kajillionaire is a beautiful, deeply empathetic film – it’s July’s best yet, perfectly balancing the director’s irrepressible earnestness with a psychoanalytical need to understand how human bonds are formed and maintained. 

For Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa Dyne (Debra Winger), petty crime is both a lifestyle and philosophy. They’ve steeped their daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), in all its little deceptions and delusions. Her name isn’t even her own – it belongs to a homeless man who won the lottery and died before he could write her into his will. Somehow, she still does everything her parents ask. She’ll duck and roll to dodge security cameras; she’ll dress up like a schoolgirl and return stolen watches, waiting by patiently for a reward. Then the Dynes bump into Melanie (Gina Rodriguez, effervescent), an optician’s assistant who’s irritatingly well adjusted. Robert and Theresa are drawn in by her flattery – what a relief to find someone with such respect for their art. Melanie imagines she’ll be able to create her own personal Ocean’s 11 .

Old Dolio, a lanky string bean of a person, seems stuck in eternal teenagehood. She’s 26, but has successfully hidden herself away behind baggy clothes, poker-straight hair, and a low, surfer bro drone. On occasion, the disguise drops for a moment, and we’re struck by the icy-blue brilliance of Wood’s eyes. The actor’s always been a soulful presence – here, she reminds us that what is “weird” and “quirky” can so often merely be misinterpreted sadness. Her parents never treated her like a child. There were no pet names, no birthday presents. She’s a co-worker, first and foremost, and so never had any compulsion to grow or change as a person.

Richard is filled with grand theories – society is “hooked on sugar, hooked on coffee, hahaha, cry cry cry”; people all want to become “kajillionaires”; the “Big One”, the earthquake that may one day turn Los Angeles into rubble, is right around the corner. He’s managed to create a miniature cult out of his own family. Melanie may have her own issues (her mother can be a little overprotective) but, to Old Dolio, she’s someone who can finally give affection without transaction, as July lets their relationship blossom – beautifully, tentatively – from rivals to friends, to something more. To them, and to us, it’s like watching all the world’s doors fling open at once. 

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

Advertisement

Supported by

Critic’s Pick

‘Kajillionaire’ Review: California Scheming

Miranda July’s third feature follows a family of small-scale swindlers in a deceptively sunny Los Angeles.

• Share full article

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Before watching the oddly titled “Kajillionaire,” I had thought myself immune to the appeal of Miranda July’s strange and excessively whimsical movies. Suffused with coyness and childlike characters, bizarre visuals and eccentric behavior, her two previous features — her 2005 debut, “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” and “The Future” in 2011 — had left me more irked than entertained.

At first glance, “Kajillionaire” seems more of the same as we watch the Dyne family, three low-rent grifters in Los Angeles, ply their trade. While Robert (Richard Jenkins) and his wife, Theresa (Debra Winger), stand guard, their 26-year-old daughter, Old Dolio ( Evan Rachel Wood ), twists and rolls her body into a Post Office to pilfer from the mailboxes. Her contortions, designed to avoid security cameras, give her the appearance of a peculiar parkour artist, an urban animal lost inside an outsized tracksuit and desiccated curtain of hip-length hair. The three, perpetually alert for whatever they can steal and whomever they can scam, appears less a family than a well-rehearsed team, communicating in shorthand and splitting its meager gains three ways.

For too long, the movie marinates in this kind of quirk, following the Dynes home to an abandoned warehouse where the walls froth with pink-and-white foam from the bubble factory next door. Then several things happen that deepen the story and mute its eccentricities. A funny-poignant scene shows Old Dolio flinching violently from the hands of a kindly massage therapist. Later, a video of a mother bonding with her newborn leaves Old Dolio shaken and confused. Suddenly, Robert and Theresa’s behavior no longer appears loopily benign, but coldly calculating, their control of their daughter increasingly apparent.

This nagging sense of something darker crouching beneath the film’s bright images is one of the things that makes “Kajillionaire” so fascinating. Even so, the narrative doesn’t find its thematic groove until an airline-insurance swindle introduces the family to Melanie (an indispensable Gina Rodriguez), a peppy and preternaturally wise optician’s assistant. Breezing her way into their schemes, Melanie is the switch that will illuminate the Dynes’s dysfunction and their director’s surprisingly moving intent.

Bearing the brunt of July’s penchant for outlandish mannerisms and weird outfits, Wood eagerly embraces her awkward, near-feral character. It’s an intensely physical performance, requiring her to arc backward like a limbo dancer and, at one point, crawl across a parking lot on her stomach. But it’s very much acting-with-an-exclamation-point, so stylized that the character is often unreadable. This makes Rodriguez, with her wide-open face and relieving normalcy, crucial both to the plot and our investment in it: Melanie isn’t just Old Dolio’s savior, she’s our emotional interpreter.

Working with a soulfulness that slowly gains force, July hides real feelings inside surreal scenarios. In one remarkable sequence, the four invade the home of a bedridden old man, looking for valuables. Dying alone, he asks them to hang around and behave like a regular family, watching television and chatting about their day. So smoothly do Robert and Theresa comply, their ability to playact so practiced, that their very ease takes on the sheen of sociopathy; we can see why Melanie calls them monsters.

Wrapping damage and poverty in bubbles and sunshine, “Kajillionaire” is about intimacy and neglect, brainwashing and independence. Periodic earth tremors freeze and then redirect the action, acting as punctuation in Old Dolio’s growing suspicion that maybe raising her was her parents’ longest con of all.

Kajillionaire Rated R for fun in a hot tub. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In select theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig have wound in and out of each other’s lives and careers for decades. Now they are both headlining an Apple TV+ comedy of wealth and status .

Nicholas Galitzine, known for playing princes and their modern equivalents, hopes his steamy new drama, “Mary & George,” will change how Hollywood sees him .

Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth met while filming “Fargo” in 2017. Now married, they have reunited onscreen in “A Gentleman in Moscow.”

A reboot of “Gladiators,” the musclebound 1990s staple, has attracted millions of viewers in Britain. Is appointment television back ?

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Movie Reviews

Crime barely pays in Miranda July's darkly whimsical grifter tale Kajillionaire : Review

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

Kajillionaire begins with a heist, though to call it that is probably an insult to larceny. The spoils — a small stuffed panda, an unusable money order, a men's necktie — might pull a few charitable dollars at a stoop sale. But Robert ( Richard Jenkins ) and Theresa ( Debra Winger ) aren't even really looking to be thousandaires; they just, as Robert puts it virtuously, "prefer to skim."

How this pair of aging L.A. grifters have forged their life philosophy, and bent their grown daughter ( Evan Rachel Wood ) to fit the shape of it, forms the thrust of Miranda July 's latest (in theaters Sept. 25) — about as winsome a portrait of felonious parenting as any film could hope to be.

Cracked whimsicality, of course, is pretty much July's brand; a tendency to turn and face the strange with a kind of tender, searching curiosity, and then press gently on the parts that bruise. Fifteen years on from her breakout debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know (and nearly a decade since its follow-up, The Future ), she is still a sort of wobbly arbiter of hope, though she once again sets her characters down in a place that doesn't particularly seem to promise it: a dusty, sun-drabbed Los Angeles of bus stops and post offices and pawn shops.

Even among the indifferent and the down-and-out, Woods' improbably named Old Dolio (that too will be explained, eventually) stands out as a misfit: odd-mannered, gravel-voiced, her hair falling in two lank sheets down the oversize tracksuits she wears like a invisibility cloak around her body. That doesn't stop Robert and Theresa from making her the default front for the family's scams; she's nearly always the one to bluff her way up to the mail counter or massage studio or wherever their latest micro-hustle lies.

It's also her idea to make up the back rent owed on their barely legal living space by pulling off a bigger, more ambitious job. Enter Melanie ( Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez ), a "civilian" bystander just bored and friendly enough to be intrigued. A blithe sunbeam poured into Forever 21 spandex, she's everything the Dynes aren't: talky, affectionate, endlessly curious. As she burrows her way in, their cloistered world begins to crack open, and so does the movie's crooked little heart — sometimes to its own too-precious detriment, but with no small amount of charm.

Jenkins and a nearly unrecognizable Winger make the most of their small monsters, peeling back layers of callousness and calculation to hint at the messier motivations underneath. Woods' tortured Dolio sometimes skirts silliness (that voice!), but she plays her odd bird for more than absurd comedy — a girl so long subsumed by her parents' ideas of the world that she may not even know how to recognize her own. It's Rodriguez, though, who brings the surge of oxygen that breathes July's offbeat storytelling to life: bleak and funny and still, somehow, flickering with hope. B+

Related content:

• Jude Law and Carrie Coon build a seductive mystery in stylish enigma The Nest
• The Secrets We Keep is a contrived but well-acted thriller
• House of Cardin is an incomplete portrait of the artist

Related Articles

• facebook-rs

‘Kajillionaire’: Miranda July’s Con-Artist-Family Drama Is Superior Quirk

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

Kajillionaire , the oddly charming new movie by Miranda July , is about a family trapped in a cycle of bad plans. There’s the curiously named Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) and her parents, Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins), who named their daughter for a homeless man who won the lottery but used up all the money before he could write the girl into his will. 

Which is the kind of arbitrary circumstance — a tremor of luck that ends as quickly and unexpectedly as it began — that seems to define this family. When we meet them , they’re living in an unused office space, nestling themselves between cubicle walls when they sleep at night. The internet works, which is nice, but they’re behind on rent, and the funds they do come up with are, shall we say, untraditional: a money order, a random $20 bill, someone’s old but nice-ish tie. They got the place at a discount, though even this proves to be a caveat in action: one side of their home borders a bubble factory, and every week, they arrive home to pink suds glopping down the wall. It’s like living in a soap sponge with ethernet. 

They’re about to get evicted from the bubble-verse, however — an especially urgent predicament for people who live, not even from check to check, but from low-grade to lower-grade hustle. Old Dolio and her parents are petty crooks, stealing mail, running low-end schemes on other vulnerable, lonely people, and somehow getting away with it. You sense they’ve lived this way for some time. You also sense that Dolio — who in another version of this movie, the one that might have come out 15 years ago, would be a plucky but over-it teenager — wants out. 

It’s a strange situation that befalls strange people, which is not unusual for July. Nor is it unusual for this director to make a film about people driven along through life by their own curious ambitions, wants and needs that, for all the ways they feel normal — the desire to make art, to adopt a cat, to be able to afford one’s rent — play out in her films with an almost painful individuality. July’s movies are comedies, in a sense. But usually they are about people who cannot seem to live, think, or feel the way “normal” people do those things, whose desires for normal lives are subverted by the quirks of who they are. This is comedy wed not just to melancholy but to a deep sense, maybe fear, of failure. 

Editor’s picks

The 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term.

But failure on whose terms? Old Dolio is the heroine of the movie. But it’s her father Robert — a classic shambly role for Jenkins — who puts the idea plainly: “Most people want to be kajillionaires,” he says. “That’s the dream. That’s how they get you hooked. Hooked on sugar, hooked on caffeine — ha-ha-ha, cry-cry-cry!” No 401K, no buying into the false promise of capital, no playing along. He’d rather skim, he says. Robert is the kind of self-selected outcast likely to remind you that having a cell phone is like carrying a piece of CIA technology in your pocket.

He doesn’t live up to those ideals as neatly as he’d expect, of course; again, failure abounds in Miranda July’s world, even if it’s a failure to be as abnormal or free from the status quo as a person thinks he is. For some reason — the same reason? — on a flight back from New York, which is itself part of the family’s plan to get that rent money, entrusts the details of an ongoing scheme to his seatmate, Melanie (Gina Rodriquez). No security clearance needed; he asks if she’s trustworthy, she says yes, and he ropes her in. 

Which is when the movie changes, somewhat: a talkative, friendly, regular-shmegular person enters into the midst of this odd crew and sparks new tensions, new recognitions. Kajillionaire feels in some ways like a relic, harkening back to the recent past of indie quirk but dressing it up in the pain of overgrown kidulthood. The difference between July’s work and those other movies is that the quirks aren’t a mere matter of personality or window dressing, but evidence of a way of being in the world that, to the majority, isn’t quite right. Evan Rachel Wood’s Old Dolio — one of her best performances to date — comes off, in her track suits and with her long hair, like a person who wants to disappear behind a curtain and squeeze her body in so tight that maybe, if she doesn’t move, you won’t notice her. Her cheeks are gaunt; her desires are, at first glance, straightforward.

But she deepens. Intriguingly, they all do. Often all it takes is an aside: a mother’s remark to her daughter about her ability to feel, a father revealing just what kind of man he is, despite all the trappings of paranoid ambivalence weighing him down. Watching Old Dolio navigate the odd terrain of this movie is in many ways a thrill. Kajillionaire doesn’t always stand head and shoulders about the manic-quirk pack of its genre; July sometimes manufactures means of self-realization that feel forced for a filmmaker whose real knack is for taking old saws and rendering them unexpectedly delightful or free. I watch her films certain that we live on the same planet and equally prepared to see it through fresh eyes. 

10 Best Things We Saw at Toronto International Film Festival 2020

The mob rules: 'goodfellas' at 30.

Kajillionaire does not, end to end, satisfy this as well as some of July’s earlier work. But there are sequences and incidents here that surprised me. One, involving yet another scheme — there’s a dying man involved, and an eerie moment in which everyone plays house to his benefit — that proved shocking because, though a number of other directors can (and have) come up with scenes like this, few push through to its awkward uncertainties this confidently. Scenes like this can make the skin tingle. Kajillionaire just doesn’t have enough of them.

Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Will Break Down Every 'SNL' Short on New Podcast

• By Ethan Millman

Joaquin Phoenix, Ilana Glazer, More Support Jonathan Glazer in Open Letter After Oscars Speech

• By Larisha Paul

Johnny Flynn on Playing Dickie Greenleaf, Learning Italian, and Dying on Camera in 'Ripley'

• The Dark Side
• By Emily Zemler

'Girls State' Revisits Faux-Government Program From the Female Perspective. It's Not Pretty

• MOVIE REVIEW
• By David Fear

'Sugar' Gives You a Sweetly Hardboiled Colin Farrell and One Sour WTF Twist

• By Alan Sepinwall

Most Popular

Chance perdomo, 'gen v' and 'chilling adventures of sabrina' star, dies at 27, chance perdomo, 'chilling adventures of sabrina' and 'gen v' star, dies at 27, barron trump’s super-rare outing with dad donald may show why we never see them together, partynextdoor reveals nsfw 'partynextdoor 4' album cover, you might also like, faith stowers sues bravo, nbcu over mistreatment on ‘vanderpump rules,’ citing ‘vicious assaults’ and ‘racist harassment’, zegna group closes stellar year, chairman confirms guidance eyeing further growth, this best-selling under-desk walking pad is over $100 off on amazon today, disney dates ‘mandalorian & grogu,’ ‘toy story 5,’ and ‘tron: ares,’ bumps ‘moana’ live-action remake to 2026, bronny james declares for nba draft, enters transfer portal.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

Let Miranda July decode the ‘love language’ of ‘Kajillionaire’ for you

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

Spoiler warning: The following story discusses the ending of the film “Kajillionaire,” now available on PVOD. If you haven’t yet seen the film, come back once you have. And in the meantime, check out this review and this story on the creation of Evan Rachel Wood’s character, Old Dolio .

Two women stand at the checkout counter of a big-box store, making a number of returns. As one of them hands over one last item, a necklace she is wearing, the register turns over to $525.00. The moment swells as the two women entwine for their first romantic kiss.

When Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire” premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, there was a palpable shift in the room as audiences veered from enjoying an affable, offbeat comedy about a family of low-stakes con artists to being swept up by a sincere, vulnerable romance. Hearts burst with joy and eyes filled with tears. One would be hard-pressed to recall the last time a cash register signaled such an emotional turn.

Currently playing in theaters where they are open, “Kajillionaire” is now also available as a PVOD rental.

The film opens with the exploits of the Dyne family, parents Theresa and Robert (Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) and their daughter Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) , stealing packages from a post office. While pulling off a scam involving a fake lost-luggage claim against an airline, the three of them meet the buoyant, buzzy Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), who is intrigued by their unusual lifestyle. Melanie and Old Dolio grow closer, as Old Dolio slowly begins to understand all of the ways her parents have raised her for their very specific life outside conventional society while also withholding affection and intimacy.

Eventually Old Dolio begins to pull away from her parents and seems to be heading toward a relationship with Melanie. Robert and Theresa invite Old Dolio and Melanie to dinner, giving Old Dolio gifts they had never given her through the years. But later the parents also rob Melanie’s apartment, leaving only their gifts for Old Dolio. When she returns everything they gave her, it comes to the total of $525, Old Dolio’s share of the $1,575 from the luggage scam. With a kiss with Melanie, her new life begins.

In a sense there is a secret movie nestled inside the movie in “Kajillionaire,” as the comedy about a family of grifters transforms into a romantic story of self-discovery.

“I feel it’s sort of two romances parallel, one with her parents, this kind of really bittersweet breakup, parallel with the romance of the two women,” said July. “And that’s true to the end, that they are really tied together through to 525. In seeing that, [Old Dolio] is kind of released into the world.

“Why did I do that? I love a romance,” July said. “I’ll pretty much read or watch anything that has the motor of a romance in it, but you can get a lot of other stuff in there, that even I might not want to write about or think about, that is kind of difficult or icky — the family stuff. But the romance, and I don’t just mean it’s like a sugar coating, it really opened my heart. There’s a vulnerability and I so wanted that.”

I love a romance.

— Miranda July on her film ‘Kajillionaire’

For Wood, the importance of that shift into romance was apparent from the first time she read the script.

“It felt that we were filming two different movies almost,” Wood said. “There’s the movie with me and Richard and Debra, and in Miranda’s treatment it was very clear that you were going to feel that sense of isolation and this uneasy feeling around her parents, it was going to feel slightly suffocating. And then when it transitioned into this other world, the whole movie changes, ’cause that’s when Old Dolio is alive.”

For Robert and Theresa, including Old Dolio in their scams is, as July put it, their “love language.” So they express their affection for their daughter by putting her through one more scheme, and give her gifts that they know she will return for her share of the money. When they finally express affection toward Old Dolio at their dinner, saying nice things to her, it’s left vague as to whether they really mean it or if it’s just another ploy.

“It’s funny, me and Richard discussed that a lot. He has to give this big speech, and I felt like both things could be true,” said July. “I’ve had experience with that kind of narcissist where it’s all true in the moment and you’re both moved to tears. It’s just not going to change anything. I’m sort of curious in this movie about what is real, when they pretend to be a family. I don’t know, it’s confusing even to me.

“And I guess as an artist, as a believer in artists, I think things that are not real can make real things happen — like movies can create real change,” said July. “And so that is true in this movie — things don’t have to be 100% true to be real or to create transformation.”

Wood added of Old Dolio’s interactions with her parents, “It can be very confusing because they’re incredibly gifted at seeming sincere. And sometimes they have convinced themselves that what they’re doing is loving. So it might come across that way. And usually they know what to say to manipulate you. So I don’t know if it’s as cut-and-dry as if they mean it or not. I think what they’ve done and how they’ve raised her in their mind was an act of love, and turned out to be incredibly abusive.”

July wrote the screenplay to “Kajillionaire” after working on her debut novel, “The First Bad Man.” She said she came away from that experience enjoying the twists and turns of plot mechanics more than she had while writing her previous screenplays for “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and “The Future.” But she also became keenly aware while writing “Kajillionaire” just how tricky the shift in tone throughout the movie was going to be, building and building to that final moment at the cash register.

Past a certain point of this movie, it all has to work to all build up to that final shot.

— Miranda July on finding the structure of “Kajillionaire”

“When I was writing it, I was like, ‘This better work,’ because this is not like other movies where you could keep changing stuff around in any number of ways. Past a certain point of this movie, it all has to work to all build up to that final shot. I remember watching the [rough-cut] assembly, which is always just such a disaster, and wanting to go jump out a window, but realizing that the ending works. So that was the only thing that I knew.

“I couldn’t fix it if that didn’t work. And even in the roughest stage, I was like, ‘OK, so we’re working toward that.’”

Having premiered in January and originally scheduled for a summer release, “Kajillionaire” was obviously not made with the pandemic in mind, but there is something of-the-moment about a story in which a person starved for intimacy and affection finally finds some.

“I think Old Dolio has tried her whole life to be invisible to the world,” said Wood, ”but trying so hard to get approval from her parents, love has never been unconditional. It’s been very much based off of performance. So to finally have her greatest hope, and worst fear, realized — ‘Oh, I’m being seen,’ and not only am I being seen, I’m being loved — it’s just so powerful. Especially in this time now when we’re all isolated and devoid of touch and connection and these things, we’re all kind of versions of Old Dolio.”

More to Read

Review: In ‘Housekeeping for Beginners,’ a makeshift family evokes universal pain

April 4, 2024

Review: In ‘Love Lies Bleeding,’ dangerous lusts and noirish calculations are alive and well

March 8, 2024

Review: ‘How to Have Sex’ follows a trio of women at the age of consent in the Age of Consent

Feb. 2, 2024

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Mark Olsen writes about all kinds of movies for the Los Angeles Times as both a feature writer and reviewer.

More From the Los Angeles Times

‘Scoop’ depicts Prince Andrew’s infamous interview. These were the women behind it

April 5, 2024

Review: In ‘The Beast,’ two lovers can’t connect — and maybe AI is to blame

Julia Stiles privately welcomed third child while directing her first movie

Review: ‘Kim’s Video’ is a meandering shrine to a shuttered media palace with an afterlife

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘Kajillionaire’ Review: Evan Rachel Wood Elevates Miranda July’s Quirky Con Story

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Show more sharing options
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Print This Page
• Share on WhatsApp

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Focus Features releases the film in theaters on Friday, September 25.

Stories about con artist families speak to desperate times, and we’re apparently living through them, because each of the last three years have brought new cinematic entries to the genre. First came Hirokazu Kore-eda’s delicate “Shoplifters,” followed by Bong Joon Ho’s zany “Parasite,” both of which centered on offspring wondering if their family values might be off-kilter. Now comes Miranda July ’s “ Kajillionaire ,” a minor-key sketch of a movie with soulful undercurrents that sneak into a cynical plot as its principle character wises up.

Elevated by an extraordinary Evan Rachel Wood performance that finds her character literally discovering her free will, “Kajillionaire” splits the difference between “Shoplifters” and “Parasite”: It’s an understated dramedy with bite, oscillating from the implication that family bonds are bullshit to the conclusion that everybody deserves a little tough love.

It’s been 15 years since July’s acclaimed debut “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” and nine since “The Future,” but the prolific multimedia performance artist has maintained a striking clarity of vision during that time. “Kajillionaire” shows no grand ambition to upend July’s penchant for small-scale stories about awkward introverts and their struggles to connect with the world around them. This time, however, the con artist concept provides a more grounded framework for roving thematic exploration, and builds to an intimate payoff as only this filmmaker could pull off.

The story centers on the struggling Dyne family, headed by Robert (a disheveled Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger, wizened and wide-eyed). Their daughter has a ridiculous name that speaks to her parents’ eccentric past, but Old Dolio Dyne (Wood) doesn’t know a thing about that; an awkward, lanky woman barely capable of eye contact, she lives wholly within the confines of the grifter lifestyle that dictates her existence.

For the Dynes, each day makes for a peculiar survival story, as they roam the streets of Los Angeles chasing two-bit scams in an ongoing quest to make rent at the ramshackle bubble factory where they rent out an abandoned office space. Their home adds a surreal dimension to July’s previous explorations of domestic life, as pink foam from the factory routinely oozes across their walls and their living room is comprised of unkempt cubicles.

The Dynes control every facet of Old Dolio’s life, but their situation has already grown unsustainable, with their kooky landlord giving them a week to make rent or else they’re out on the street. Fortunately, the Dynes have trained Old Dolio well — “she learned to forget before she could read or write,” her father beams — and she quickly proposes a solution: One speedy roundtrip flight to New York and back yields a stolen luggage scheme and travel insurance to get them out of their jam. But in the midst of their absurd plot, the family’s tight-knit routine gets complicated when Old Dolio’s parents meet the kooky Melanie (Gina Rodriguez) on their flight and decide on a whim to bring her into their clan.

An ebullient young woman eager to get a cut of the Dynes’ next scam, Melanie raises Old Dolio’s suspicions from the outset, in part because she feels threatened by the very presence of a stranger in her life. But Melanie quickly offers up her own resources for financial gain: By selling bifocals to elderly clients barely cognizant of their surroundings, Melanie is able to bring her accomplices into the old folks’ homes to swindle their checkbooks.

This concept yields a pair of odd sequences, including one prolonged bit involving a dying man eager to have his invaders help him along to the grave. In July’s quirky hands, the encounter is somehow both touching and ridiculous, as the Dynes engage in an improv comedy routine to deceive their mark while he slowly drifts away. Nobody feels particularly good about it, but for Old Dolio, it’s the first indication that she may have deeper feelings than she knows how to express. And Melanie, whose initial presence in the movie feels like a gimmick, gradually takes an interest in helping the woman out of her shell.

July eschews bold stylistic gestures for a quieter accumulation of meaningful exchanges, but there’s an undeniable cosmic energy simmering just beneath the surface of many scenes. In a blunt device that grows more substantial with time, July hints at that idea with recurring L.A. earthquakes that routinely cause the anxious Dynes to fear for their lives, a recurring trope that reaches a remarkable cosmic twist in the movie’s closing act. The ground shakes once more and suddenly Old Dolio wakes up: Having established her as an embodiment of her parents’ pessimism, it allows her to embrace the risk of expressing her own convictions, and the movie comes alive with her.

“Kajillionaire” turns on the subtle rhythms of Emilie Mosseri’s score and a bright, sun-soaked palette that strikes an ironic juxtaposition with some of the darker developments. But its true engine is Wood, tasked with the unique challenge of playing a woman who “doesn’t know anything about tender feelings” and shrinks into her body on default. It’s a fascinating variation on the wild-child concept, made all the more distinctive by the urban sprawl that surrounds her.

It’s also clearly a role that July herself might have played at an earlier stage in her career, and she’s given it to an actress who seems to have a knack for muted physical transformations, given her ongoing gig as a sentient robot on HBO’s “Westworld.” In “Kajillionaire,” she also plays a woman coming to grips with her programming and learning how to push beyond it to find herself, though in this case she’s also coming of age. “Kajillionaire” wisely backs away from any melodramatic confrontations, finding a way to conclude its fractured family plot line without overstating its implications.

July’s style is at once cerebral and irreverent, but “Kajillionaire” doesn’t always find the most satisfying way to juggle those dueling tones. However, its spell lingers as July’s biggest concepts take root, and the movie turns from tragic to hopeful at an unlikely moment in tune with the artist’s previous works. Ever since her letter-based performance work “Joanie 4 Jackie,” July has explored the emotional currency of communication, and those themes remain potent here. As Old Dolio explores the prospects of new companionship, “Kajillionaire” isn’t exactly anti-family so much as it celebrates what it means to create one from the ground up.

“Kajillionaire” premiered in the Premieres section of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the  safety precautions   provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

Most Popular

You may also like.

Washington Square News

‘Kajillionaire’ review: a humorous and heartbreaking heist film

Writer-director Miranda July’s latest work is an unconventional heist film that encapsulates everyone’s biggest fear: disappointing your family. 

“Kajillionaire” focuses on a young woman named Old Dolio Dyne, played by Evan Rachel Wood, and her parents, Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins). The Dyne family makes money by committing petty crimes such as stealing from mailboxes and redeeming the coupons they find inside. As much a criminal syndicate than a family, the Dynes’ interpersonal relationships are strangely professional. They split their earnings equally between the three of them and never show each other any love or affection. It is never explained why they live or act like this, but it is evident that they have always acted this way. 

Each member of the family wears a unique uniform that highlights their distinct personalities. 

Old Dolio wears an extra-large dark green tracksuit everywhere she goes. Her hair is so long that it appears to swallow her frame. Theresa is always bundled up, layering sweaters on shirts on top of turtlenecks. Her husband appears to be in a perpetual state of partial undress, wearing untucked shirts and pants that betray his waist’s true girth. Although Theresa and Robert appear more normal than Old Dolio, their idiosyncratic topics of discussion, such as predicting future earthquakes that may kill them, clearly say otherwise. 

The family is strange enough to be considered weird, but not quirky enough to be considered endearing. Their personalities make it seem as if they’re competing with one another,  prioritizing their ambitions over the desire for familial connection.

When the family’s landlord tells them that they are behind on rent and gives them two weeks to pay it, Old Dolio invents a scam that will quickly get them the money. While executing the heist, her parents divulge their secrets to a stranger named Melanie, played by Gina Rodriguez. When the heist does not go as planned, Old Dolio gets angry at her parents for trusting and welcoming Melanie so easily. Much to everyone’s chagrin, Old Dolio lashes out against them in a public setting. 

Melanie represents the opposite of the Dyne family. She lives in a nice apartment full of furniture, technology and comfort. Her overly loving mother calls her multiple times a day. Even though she appears normal, she uses the Dyne family to inject some danger into her mundane life. 

July wrote these characters and their flaws as if to exclaim, “Everybody’s a mess! But it’s okay.” Melanie’s doing fine but lacks excitement and Old Dolio’s parents pretend to be grand scammers when they haven’t pulled off a single heist. Old Dolio lives an exciting life that does not seem to amuse her, and finds herself disenchanted by her parents’ act.

This series of disillusionments is perfectly captured in composer Emile Mosseri’s score. The composer behind “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” and “Minari” immerses the viewer in the intense feelings of pleasure and pain each character faces, especially Old Dolio who always seems at odds with the world around her. 

Wood is amazing as Old Dolio — a character that has almost no redeemable qualities — who somehow comes off as entirely relatable. She’s physically stiff but can also demonstrate incredible elastic agility, exemplified in the scene when she flips around to avoid security cameras and bends over backwards to leave her house without catching the attention of her landlord. She is a walking paradox.

Wood conveys the emotions of Old Dolio entirely through body language as her posture shifts between stoicism and discomfort. With a quick flick of her head, she can change from a state of calm to one of confusion. Always at odds with the world around her and quick to pivot from one axis of the emotional pendulum to another, she displays fractured modality. It’s not difficult to imagine why she’s so volatile and disheartened. After all, her whole life has revolved around pleasing her parents by planning grand schemes only to receive no recognition whatsoever upon executing them. 

Although Old Dolio initially despises Melanie, she slowly becomes enamored with her as a result of Melanie’s enthrallment with the Dyne family, and more specifically, with Old Dolio herself. No one has ever rewarded her with attention before. When someone finally does, this revolutionizes her and is shown through a dance.

In one of the film’s most memorable sequences, Melanie and Old Dolio find shelter from an earthquake at a gas station. Melanie stomps about in a furious frenzy from which Old Dolio emerges changed. After years of agony, Old Dolio finally feels love. She decides to run away with Melanie: the only person who has shown her warmth. 

Although tragic at times, “Kajillionaire” is humorous, incredibly moving, poetic and thought-provoking. It redefines interpersonal dynamics by interrogating the ways in which families demonstrate love towards each other. July uses the Dyne family to bridge the gap between needing someone and loving someone, resulting in the portrayal of unconventional relationships that are rarely shown in film.

Contact Saige Gipson at [email protected] .

Comments (0)

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Kajillionaire Review

09 Oct 2020

Kajillionaire

Artist and filmmaker Miranda July is many things — offbeat, iconoclastic, absurd — but one thing she is not is prolific. Following her classic calling card Me And You And Everyone We Know in 2005, it took her six years to follow up with The Future and now a further nine years to deliver Kajillionaire . But happily, it’s worth the wait. July’s stock-in-trade are perfectly observed, beautifully crafted miniatures of characters who live on the fringes and have little truck with normalcy, broken people often filled with a sense of longing. Kajillionaire brilliantly hits all of those touchstones, but this time within the framework of a traditionally male-dominated genre.

Because, for an hour or so, Kajillionaire is Miranda July’s take on a con movie, a kind of ‘Ocean’s Three’ in bad clothing. The Dynes are a family of ramshackle grifters — dad Robert ( Richard Jenkins ), mom Theresa ( Debra Winger ) and daughter Old Dolio ( Evan Rachel Wood ) — whose scams are decidedly small-scale: robbing a post-office safe-deposit box that scores a tie (Wood gets to indulge in some hilarious cat-burglar moves); returning gift certificates for dosh; Old Dolio pretending to be pregnant and taking part in a ‘positive parenting’ class for cash. An impetus to get more ambitious comes when they owe their weird-voiced landlord (Mark Ivanir) $1,500 in rent to stay in an empty office-style space where the walls are constantly flooded with pink, soapy suds that have to be collected in buckets (this might be Peak Miranda July). So, after winning a trip to New York in a comp, Old Dolio — the explanation for her strange name is genius — comes up with a scheme to blag airline insurance (to the tune of $1,500) via some bogus lost luggage. While the grift doesn’t go exactly to plan, it does bring chatty, extrovert Melanie ( Gina Rodriguez ) into their orbit.

This is perhaps Evan Rachel Wood’s best performance on film.

It’s at this point that Kajillionaire changes tack. Ushered into the gang, Melanie invites them on a scam where they inveigle their way into the lives of OAPs in order to pick up objects to flog, but they are caught off guard when they come across a lonely old man, clearly dying, and begin to act like a normal family to cheer him along (no, actually, this is Peak Miranda July). Melanie holds up a mirror to the oddball clan, especially opening up Old Dolio to the kind of familial warmth and kindness she has never been given.

How this all plays out is surprising, human and tender. This is perhaps Wood’s best performance on film, playing a low-energy girl hiding behind a monotone voice and straight, long hair who gradually finds a way to be vulnerable. And Rodriguez is a revelation, breathing life into the moribund family unit but revealing hidden depths beneath the cheery bluster. Their relationship is a mark of the journey July take us on. It’s a flick that starts with a con. And ends with a connection.

Related Articles

Movies | 03 12 2020

Movies | 09 10 2020

Movies | 02 09 2020

Movies | 08 09 2020

Kajillionaire (2020)

• User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews
• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Kajillionaire, common sense media reviewers.

Quirky grifter comedy is short on laughs; strong language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Centers on a family working together, but their go

Although main characters are all serial thieves an

Arguments, emotional cruelty.

Overture is made for a threesome. Kissing. Crude s

Coarse language in context of a sexual situation:

Social drinking.

Parents need to know that Kajillionaire is a comedy from writer-director Miranda July that's more quirky than laugh-out-loud funny. It centers on a socially awkward 26-year-old (Evan Rachel Wood) who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after realizing that she's lacking -- and craving -- a loving,…

Positive Messages

Centers on a family working together, but their goals aren't exactly positive -- or legal. And family support is inconsistent at best.

Positive Role Models

Although main characters are all serial thieves and have serious issues with communication and intimacy, there's representation in the form of LGBTQ+ and Latinx characters.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Overture is made for a threesome. Kissing. Crude sexual language. Nonsexual nudity includes a bare breast during breastfeeding. A character undresses down to his underwear. One character dresses in snug, somewhat revealing clothes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Coarse language in context of a sexual situation: "d--k," "t-tty," "f--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Kajillionaire is a comedy from writer-director Miranda July that's more quirky than laugh-out-loud funny. It centers on a socially awkward 26-year-old ( Evan Rachel Wood ) who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after realizing that she's lacking -- and craving -- a loving, nurturing relationship with her parents, who've always treated her like a business partner in their constant thefts and scams. "F--k" is whispered a couple of times, but most of the movie's strong language and sexual content is confined to one scene in which a woman confronts an underwear-clad man who wants to have sex with her. She uses explicit language ("titty-f--k"), but nothing else happens. In entirely different circumstances, two characters share a romantic attraction and kiss. Adults drink socially, and there's some personal tension/arguing, but no actual violence. Gina Rodriguez , Richard Jenkins , and Debra Winger co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (9)

Based on 5 parent reviews

Highly recommend

What's the story.

In KAJILLIONAIRE, a family of swindlers is in the middle of a con when they meet a young, vivacious stranger ( Gina Rodriguez ) who's intrigued by their way of life. When Theresa ( Debra Winger ) and Robert Dyne ( Richard Jenkins ) welcome Melanie into their fold, treating her like one of their own, their adult daughter, Old Dolio ( Evan Rachel Wood ), starts questioning her place.

Is It Any Good?

Miranda July's film about a family of grifters comes off like a mid-season SNL sketch that doesn't make you laugh and goes on too long. Which is too bad, considering that eccentric characters who put themselves in ridiculous situations are the stuff that many great comedies are made of. Wood misses the mark with her portrayal of Old Dolio, whom her parents named after an unhoused lottery winner in hopes that he'd include them in his will (he doesn't). Her parents, who choose to "skim" through life, are amiable but not cuddly: They've treated their daughter like a business partner since birth. All of their thought energy goes into acquiring money to get by, including living in the office space next to a car wash where they pay reduced rent in exchange for whisking away the suds that bubble over the wall daily. Old Dolio seems irritated by her parents but is completely in their control. Her stiff mannerisms and unnaturally low voice are intended to convey her social awkwardness, but it's misleading. Does she have anxiety? No. Does she have autism spectrum disorder? Hmmm, no. Does she have attachment disorder? Nope. It's just how Wood chooses to play her, and while Wood is typically a thoughtful actress, this character might as well have been constructed by Pauly Shore.

On the other hand, Old Dolio's parents are more familiar. Robert is a paranoid organizer with just enough charm to pull people in. And Theresa's every move, including an unexplained limp, speaks of the difficult life she's lived. This couple has survived by blending in: There's nothing about them that's magnetic, and therefore it's utterly baffling why Melanie, a bright light of happy energy, would be interested in hanging out with them. Even more mysterious is what she sees in Old Dolio. Other details are equally left in the dust. Annapurna Productions is known for presenting films that offer sympathetic looks at women who aren't usually offered sympathy (scamming strippers in Hustlers , the women of Fox News in Bombshell , and the persnickety valedictorian in Booksmart ), and Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment is known for making award-winning films -- but not this time. If there is any statue potential here, it's for Winger's memorable performance as the jaded Theresa: In very few words and with a mostly emotionless face, Winger relays a deep cynicism that swims under the surface like a shark. We never see her teeth, but we know she can cause pain.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why people are drawn to conspiracy theories. How does the family's belief in conspiracy theories affect their life?

How is Kajillionaire a coming-of-age film? How does it compare to others in the genre?

What kind of consequences would these characters face in real life for their actions?

What do you think motivates Melanie to engage with the Dynes? Do you think she feels compassion for Old Dolio, or are her actions a result of her attraction?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 25, 2020
• On DVD or streaming : December 22, 2020
• Cast : Evan Rachel Wood , Gina Rodriguez , Debra Winger
• Director : Miranda July
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Bisexual actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Focus Features
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 106 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some sexual references/language
• Last updated : October 29, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

A Fish Called Wanda

The Glass Castle

The Royal Tenenbaums

Indie Films

Offbeat animated movies.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• Latest Reviews
• Behind The Scenes
• Write For Us
• Advertise With Us

Substance & Meaningful Entertainment

Against gossip & scandal, independent media network, global stories from local perspective, factual culture news, ‘kajillionaire’: america’s answer to ‘parasite’, starring evan rachel wood and gina rodriguez.

Nov 3, 2020

Table of Contents

Photo: ‘ Kajillionaire’ /Focus Features

There’s no one quite like Miranda July . The actor/director/performance artist-writer-singer-sculptor-app designer-activist-fashionista is perhaps the most ‘multi’ of multi-hyphenated creatives working today. A quick look at her popular Instagram reveals a dizzying array of projects, sketches, and calls to action. Constant in July’s art is a sense of intimacy, immediacy, and spontaneous wonder. Regardless of how ‘trivial’ or ‘serious’ the subject matter is, July engages with it with earnest curiosity and a sense of play. In a world grappling with the disconnecting forces of greed, corruption, and a deeply disruptive global pandemic, a new feature film from Miranda July is a welcome gift indeed.

Right from its title, ‘ Kajillionaire’ comes across distinctly as a Miranda July production. As a filmmaker, July has always had a knack for appellations. She cleverly dubbed her debut feature, an ensemble piece, Me and You and Everyone We Know . In that film, July played a performance artist who at one point writes “Me” on one shoe and “You” on the other, and films a skit of her feet getting to know one another. Her second film, The Future , dealt with the anxieties of growing old. Trailers for the film mordantly announced, “The Future: Coming Soon.” “Kajillionaire”, a nonsense word used to describe someone with a nonsensical amount of money, is the perfect title for a film that explores the absurdities of American wealth fetishization and the way our society’s wealth inequality relegates many of the poorest members to a realm of constant childlike fantasization.

Related article:  ‘Yes, God, Yes’ Review: Natalie Dyer Soars in this Coming-of-Age Comedy with 50 Hail Mary’s, Ad Infinitum

Related article:  ‘Borat 2’ Review? Very Nice! – Sacha Baron Cohen Has Done it Again with ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’

Parasitic Relationships – ‘Kajillionaire’

Kajillionaire follows the scheming and dreaming of a family of criminals who have rejected traditional employment in favor of stealing and scrounging off of the abundant excesses available in the most American of American cities, Los Angeles . Theresa and Robert ( Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins ) are steadfastly ideologically synchronized in their beliefs that they live in a society full of brainwashed suckers, while their daughter Old Dolio ( Evan Rachel Wood ) is ambivalent, emotionally stunted, and in the thrall of her Svengali-like parents. With its focus on a family of clever strivers who have developed an abstractified and talismanic conception of wealth due to their lack of it, Kajillionaire does seem like an Americanized interpretation of Bong Joon-Ho ’s phenomenal 2019 film Parasite . However, one of the many charms of Parasite was the unabiding love and camaraderie the central family felt for each other. The Dyne family in Kajillionaire have come to interpret ‘love’ as just another marketing ploy designed to dupe consumers into emptying their pockets.

Love was central to the organic and collaborative survival strategies implemented by the family in Parasite . In Kajillionaire, collaboration is far more robotic, militant, even insectlike. Drills to avoid detection are regularly rehearsed, security cameras are clocked, and receipts and coupons are fastidiously filed away. They’re constantly looking for a goldmine like the Healthy Choice pudding loophole Adam Sandler exploits in Punch-Drunk Love , but it never materializes and they’re beaten down by the grind. Thus the Dynes have come to regard each other like bees in a hierarchical hive. Each has a purpose, and no derivation from that purpose is tolerated. At one point, Theresa and Robert suspect Old Dolio is pregnant and seem ready to spurn her, but Robert sniffs her for pheromones to remove the notion. Further heightening the animalistic aspect of the trio is their palpable attachment to their environment–they live in constant fear of “The Big One”, the earthquake destined to one day sink California into the sea.

Related article: MUST WATCH –  Hollywood Insider’s  CEO Pritan Ambroase’s Love Letter to Black Lives Matter – VIDEO

Subscribe to  Hollywood Insider’s  YouTube Channel, by clicking here. 

Miranda July starred in her first two feature films, utilizing a performance art-informed heightened deliberateness in her acting to emphasize her characters’ interpersonal and environmental relationships. Kajillionaire has Evan Rachel Wood seamlessly stepping in to serve as July’s avatar. Her performance is almost vaudevillian in its physicality–in a recurring bit, Old Dolio limbos behind a low concrete wall to avoid being spotted by her family’s landlord. She also develops her own stealth-focused movement exercises, which resemble interpretive dance choreography. Old Dolio’s capacity for physicality is a stark contrast to that of her parents, who both have a default setting of paranoid stiffness. However, Old Dolio does share her parents’ penchant for mechanical mannerisms and intentionally frumpy clothing. As a character, she is a metaphor for the struggle between ossifying inherited poverty and the desire for upward mobility and escape. Even the story behind the name Old Dolio is one of rags to riches fantasy–her parents named her after a homeless man who won the lottery in a never-achieved bid to have her named as his beneficiary upon death. Old Dolio is thus a constant reminder of her parent’s vanished hopes and dreams. July’s script is full of brilliant conceptual flourishes such as this. 

The story of Old Dolio’s name may have been inspired by an event in July’s own life. While developing her film The Future , July met a man named Joe Putterlik through advertisements in PennySaver magazine. She ended up casting him in her movie. When Joe passed away, July ended up inheriting Putterlik’s treasured tabletop Christmas Village . 

Related article:  The Power of Positivity: Ikorodu Bois + Chris Hemsworth + Russo Brothers + Sam Hargrave

Limited Time Offer – FREE Subscription to  Hollywood Insider –  Click here to read more on  Hollywood Insider’s  vision, values and mission statement here – Media has the responsibility to better our world –  Hollywood Insider  fully focuses on substance and meaningful entertainment, against gossip and scandal, by combining entertainment, education, and philanthropy. 

Like a Christmas Village, many of the setpieces in Kajillionaire have meticulous thematic resonance, brought to life by production designer Sam Lisenco . The Dynes live in a home that is actually an abandoned call center like the one in Sorry to Bother You . In another parallel to Parasite , their status of being financially underwater is literalized by flooding of their home–in Kajillionaire, the walls regularly ooze with pink soap suds from the car wash next door. A scene inside a windowless and unlit gas station bathroom comes to evoke a vast starlit sky and turns into a meditation on death and our aloneness in the universe. A gathering of never-given birthday presents is lined up in a visual testament to a childhood of neglect. And perhaps in Evan Rachel Wood’s most powerful scene, a young woman silently weeps through the face cradle of a massage chair as she realizes she is unable to be touched.

A Gentle Birth

So many of July’s films are informed by the deep desire for human connection and understanding, and the pathologies that one can develop when that desire is unmet. In Me and You and Everyone We Know , John Hawkes plays a newly divorced dad who deliberately immolates his hand with lighter fluid in a desperate attempt to connect with his children. In The Future , an emotionally adrift Hamish Linklater forms a relationship with the moon and beseeches it for comfort, to which the moon responds, “I don’t know anything. I’m just a rock in the sky.” In an examination that continues into her most recent film, July examines how pain and delusion are often preferable to containing within ourselves our more indecipherable inadequacies.

Related article:  The Masters of Cinema Archives: Hollywood Insider Pays Tribute to ‘La Vie En Rose’, Exclusive Interview with Director Olivier Dahan

Related article:  Martin Scorsese: 32 Facts on the Powerful Auteur of Cinema Synonymous with Hollywood

Kajillionaire may simultaneously be the most approachable and the most unique of July’s features to date. Produced by Annapurna and Brad Pitt ’s Plan B Entertainment , it is likely to be many audiences’ introduction to her work. It’s a fantastic entry point, thanks in no small part to the addition of Melanie, a chatty stranger the Dyne family ropes in on a booze-addled plane ride. As Melanie, Gina Rodriguez gives a ray-of-light performance. Her guilelessness and effortless sensuality introduce an unsettling threat of intimacy into the regimented structure of the Dyne family (a bizarre seduction attempt involving an unplugged hot tub and a paper plate covered in saltines have to be seen to be believed). Old Dolio, who after being paid to attend a mandated pregnancy class in someone’s place becomes fixated on the intimacy particulars of her birth, sees that her parents are capable of affection through their treatment of Melanie. They just choose not to give any to their daughter. 

The dynamic July creates is fascinating–in this family’s attempt to utterly reject mindless consumerism, they end up commodifying everything, love included. July questions whether we, like Old Dolio, will overcome or succumb to the myriad traumas of our reality. Do we reject the big, dumb world? Or do we take a note from the friendly stranger on the airplane and accept that, in life, “most happiness comes from the dumb things”?

Now available for VOD streaming on Amazon , Vudu , Microsoft , Google Play , and Fandango .

By  Trent Kinnucan

An excerpt from the love letter:  Hollywood Insider’s  CEO/editor-in-chief  Pritan Ambroase  affirms,  “Hollywood Insider  fully supports the much-needed Black Lives Matter movement. We are actively, physically and digitally a part of this global movement. We will continue reporting on this major issue of police brutality and legal murders of Black people to hold the system accountable. We will continue reporting on this major issue with kindness and respect to all Black people, as each and every one of them are seen and heard. Just a reminder, that the Black Lives Matter movement is about more than just police brutality and extends into banking, housing, education, medical, infrastructure, etc. We have the space and time for all your stories. We believe in peaceful/non-violent protests and I would like to request the rest of media to focus on 95% of the protests that are peaceful and working effectively with positive changes happening daily. Media has a responsibility to better the world and  Hollywood Insider  will continue to do so.”

Vote with a conscience – Register to Vote – Your vote saves lives and ends systemic racism

Ways to support Black Lives Matter Movement to end systemic racism

More Interesting Stories From  Hollywood Insider

–  Want GUARANTEED SUCCESS? Remove these ten words  from your vocabulary| Transform your life INSTANTLY

–  Compilation: All James Bond 007 Opening Sequences  From 1962 Sean Connery to Daniel Craig

–  Do you know the hidden messages in ‘Call Me By Your Name’?  Find out behind the scenes facts in the full commentary and In-depth analysis of the cinematic masterpiece

–  A Tribute To The Academy Awards: All Best Actor/Actress Speeches From The Beginning Of Oscars 1929-2019  | From Rami Malek, Leonardo DiCaprio To Denzel Washington, Halle Berry & Beyond | From Olivia Colman, Meryl Streep To Bette Davis & Beyond

–  In the 32nd Year Of His Career, Keanu Reeves’ Face Continues To Reign After Launching Movies Earning Over $4.3 Billion In Total  – “John Wick”, “Toy Story 4”, “Matrix”, And Many More

Kajillionaire,  Kajillionaire,  Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire, Kajillionaire

Trent Kinnucan is a film and television critic, with over 5,000 film hours logged to date. He is devoted to maintaining an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, with consideration for its history, its cultural impact, and its ability to create social change. Trent enjoys finding films that amplify voices otherwise unheard, and reveal images otherwise unseen. Trent ’s interest in media coverage as a way to inspire meaningful dialogue led him to Hollywood Insider, a media network that consistently prioritises journalism and content with a purpose. Trent also recognizes that media is meant to be enjoyed, which aligns with Hollywood Insider’s penchant for tackling complex issues with levity and original insight. Trent hopes to share his love of film with others, and to help further expand the bandwidth of artists with something to say.

View all posts

You might also like…

Newsletter Subscription

• Enter Your Email *
• Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Related Articles