Movie Review: "King Of California" (2007)

The Essentials

Title: King Of California (official site)
Directed by Mike Cahill
Written by Mike Cahill
Running Time: 1 hr. 33 min
Release Date: September 14th, 2007
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, mature thematic elements and brief drug references.

The Plot of “King Of California”

An unstable dad gets out of a mental institution and promptly tries to convince his daughter that there’s Spanish gold buried somewhere under suburbia…and that she should help him find it.

The Story of “King Of California”

At the age of sixteen, Miranda has already had to live with her share of disappointments. Abandoned by her mother, she’s dropped out of school and has been supporting herself as an employee at McDonald’s while her father Charlie resides in a mental institution. When Charlie is released and sent back to their home, Miranda finds the relatively peaceful existence she’s built for herself completely disrupted. Charlie has become obsessed with the notion that the long-lost treasure of Spanish explorer Father Juan Florismarte Garces is buried somewhere near their suburban California housing unit. Armed with a metal detector and a stack of treasure-hunting books, Charlie soon finds reason to believe that the gold resides underneath the local Costco, and encourages Miranda to get a job there so that they can plan a way to excavate after hours. (from Yahoo! movies)

The Review of “King Of California”

Mike Cahill does an impressive job of writing and directing his first feature film. On the surface, King Of California is easily entertaining and highly watchable even when the plot of the film sometimes falls into holes the size of…well, a river.

I’ve seen enough movies to know when the audience is expected to accept the whimsical and sometimes non-sensical happenings of a darkly comedic plot. I don’t mind occasionally setting aside realism and accepting that some things are simply fun and entertaining and are not meant to be based in reality. I understand that Cahill was probably going for that in this film.

The movie actually started off really well. I enjoyed the first part of the film immensely. When the movie came out everyone was giving Michael Douglas all the praise for his wacky, idiosyncratic characterization of the newly released (from a crazy home) father. And he does deserve accolades for another fine performance. However, it’s Evan Rachel Wood’s down to earth daughter, Miranda, that really steals the show here. Her role isn’t flashy or crazy so it’s a lot harder for her to steal scenes from someone like Michael Douglas but her presence is felt in each and every frame she’s in. I was very much impressed with her performance.

The second half of the film quickly degenerated into ridiculousness. Convincing the audience there might be gold buried undernearth Costco is one thing; convincing the audience an entire underground river runs under Costco not five feet below the surface…quite another. I suppose some people are able to look past the absurd “little” things like the river and enjoy the film for the quirky and dysfunctional relationship between the father and daughter or the message the film is trying to convey. I’m not one of those people. The little things that make no sense bother me. I can look past some of them, but when too many occur in the same film, the film has serious flaws.

I really wanted to like King Of California and there were things about it that I did enjoy. In the end, however, I found the film charming, but flawed. I think it tried too hard to be quirky and eccentric and ended up being a lot like a lot of other movies. I ended up not liking the film nearly as much as I had hoped I would.

Watch “King Of California” If…

You’re a big Michael Douglas or Evan Rachel Wood fan. It’s also worth watching for the dialog in the screenplay which I thought was pretty good. Don’t watch it with the kiddos since the filmmakers made this family film un-kid friendly with needless curse words and adult situations (such as a situation involving a group of swingers).