Kajillionaire: A Grifter Finds Meaning

I was lucky enough to win tickets to a virtual premiere of Kajillionaire, a movie written and directed by Miranda July, starring Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Debra Winger, and Richard Jenkins. Let all those names sink in - this movie has to be good right? Well it is, and oddly, it features a timely message about how to live your life to the fullest that feels especially relevant when we're all currently holed up in our homes. And spoiler alert, the answer is not that you need to be a kajillionaire.

Wood stars as Old Dolio (no that is not a typo - she was named that for bizarre reasons in keeping with the bizarreness of her upbringing), a young woman who has been raised by two small-time grifters, Robert and Theresa (Jenkins and Winger). They are an odd family whose sole purpose in life is to come up with screwball scams to scrounge up some cash to pay their bills. They are emphatically small-time: they don’t want to engage in any spectacular Oceans Eleven-style heist that will net them millions. They want $1500 to tide them over till next month’s rent is due.

Old Dolio seems satisfied with this daily grind until the family runs into Melanie (Rodriguez) in the middle of a con. Her parents seem taken with this lady, who is charismatic and gorgeous and seems capable of enacting a whole new set of cons simply by using her winning personality, something that Old Dolio distinctly lacks. But as the movie progresses, the two young women bond, and as Melanie shows Old Dolio that she deserves more from life than what scraps her parents have shown her, the movie gets less funny and far more warm, emotional, and ultimately life-affirming.

Kajillionaire is a deeply weird and profound movie that I wish I had been able to see in a theater (and hear - the soundtrack by Emile Mosseri is gorgeous). You could stop this movie at any point and the resulting frame would be something that should be displayed at a museum. The colors, the textures, the sheer over-the-top splendor of it all, even when these people are living such grubby lives, shows how beauty can be found even in the most unseemly places, and ultimately, Old Dolio emerges from her chrysalis as the most beautiful character of them all. Find this movie and give it a whirl: it’s an unusual experience that you won’t regret.