“Kajillionaire” is a strange bird, in more ways than one.
For starters, it’s just a weird movie. The latest work from respected filmmaker Miranda July possesses odd sensibilities, including a purposefully downbeat rhythm.
And despite boasting a few terrific actors in its key roles — most significantly “Westworld” star Evan Rachel Wood as its central figure, the 26-year-old Old Dolio — and some unusual story elements, it isn’t all that entertaining.
It is, on the other hand, thematically satisfying, “Kajillionaire” leaving you with food for thought about the lasting effects parenting has on a person into adult life.
Sort of (but not really) a heist movie, it is a tale of an unusual family of con artists. The Dynes — Robert (Richard Jenkins), Theresa (Debra Winger) and daughter Old Dolio — are small-time grifters. They often work very hard for small sums of money.
Our introduction to them provides a pretty accurate sense of the movie as a whole. After getting off a bus in front of a downtown Los Angeles post office, Theresa and Robert wait for the right moment to give the go-ahead command to Old Dolio, who then performs some weird gymnastics before walking inside the building. (She has been raised to be aware of and deftly avoid security cameras.)
Inside, Old Dolio unlocks a box, waits until a worker she can see through the opening in the next room walks away and reaches through to grab whatever she can from the slots for neighboring boxes.
Back outside, the Dynes go through the few packages she has swiped, with Robert acting particularly pleased with a necktie he declares to be not cheap.
They next try to sneak back into what serves as their home, a very-leaky office space for which they are way behind on rent. As they try to get past their emotional landlord (Mark Ivanir of new Netflix series “Away”) by scrunching below the low wall where he stands, Old Dolio chooses a maneuver suggesting she would do quite well in a limbo contest.
The family, which constantly enters various sweepstakes and has just won airfare to New York City, attempts a scam involving a lost-luggage claim. It is Old Dolio’s idea, and it would net them about $1,600. On the flight, Robert and Theresa, sitting apart from their daughter, befriend the chatty-and-peppy Melanie (Gina Rodriguez).
Intrigued by the extremely strange pair, Melanie soon gets let in on the plan by the rather charmed Robert, and she decides to help them when they land. She quickly becomes — seemingly to Old Dolio, anyway — something akin to a second daughter.
Already out of sorts from something she’d seen about how a mother should interact with its baby right after his or her birth — and getting confirmation from a dismissive Theresa she did not do that with her — Old Dolio clearly is perplexed and worried about what’s happening.
We learn more about the Dynes through their collective and individual interactions with Melanie, who serves as an audience surrogate. One particularly telling moment sees Old Dolio, who wears a lot of baggy clothing, suggesting to the contemporarily dressed Melanie she “wear more clothes — you’re making everybody feel uncomfortable.”
Old Dolio — yes, you’ll get an explanation regarding her name, and it’s tremendous — is a fascinating character, one who never seems to have developed a sexual side, for starters.
“Kajillionaire” is much more a study of her than a heist movie, and it is on that level the film succeeds.
And while the always-wonderful Jenkins (“The Shape of Water,” “The Visitor”) is in fine form, Winger (“Shadowlands,” “Terms of Endearment”) makes something out of what ultimately is too minor of a character and Rodriguez (“Jane The Virgin,” “Miss Bala”) adds a contrasting personality to the mix, this is a showcase for the talents of Wood, whose big-screen credits include “The Wrestler” and “The Ides of March.” Hers is a tricky role — it would have been easy for an actor to go too big with it — and she handles it with great care and skill.
Unfortunately, none of that changes the fact that the movie is pretty slow and may have benefited from a few more plot elements. July, whose previous films are “Me and You and Everyone We Know” (2005) and “The Future” (2011),” succeeds in challenging the viewer — leaving you with a closing scene that feels more earned the longer you sit with it — but you can’t help but wonder if her best work doesn’t lie somewhere in the future.
Still, “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.
That’s almost priceless.
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