Fresh and Exciting

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I liked this movie because of the juxtaposition of sort of mythological California and the whole mystery surrounding California with the very pragmatic realism that now envelopes modern California. The mythology of California is juxtaposed with the pragmatic reality that has been imposed upon the cultural domain, wherein once upon a time mythology was revered, now the practical has complete dominion and dreaming and capturing a lost mythology is suspect and only madmen contemplate such fanciful non pragmatism. I give this movie a thumbs up.

This isn't the kind of movie that I usually watch, and I think that I'm pretty far out of its target demographic. However, I figured that I'd take a chance, given that I was bored and feeling open-minded. At times, I was worried that King of California would descend into insipid and clichéd family-friendly themes, but it kept surprising me with a bit of subversiveness or social commentary. Michael Douglas's character serves as the classic "wise fool", an ostensibly foolish character who nonetheless imparts great wisdom, due in no small part to his inability to properly socialize in polite society. His daughter, more inhibited and straight-laced, learns to think outside the box, trust her instincts, question authority, follow her dreams, etc. By the end of the movie, I was half-expecting her to join some New Age cult and/or dye her hair purple.The pacing really slows down to a crawl sometimes, but, overall, it's a fairly good movie with a message that should resonate with nonconformists, hippies, and madmen.

A comedy that doesn't have its first laugh out loud moment until it's more than halfway over and then takes an oddly unjustified turn into the maudlin at the end isn't usually going to be that good. Add in a gratingly whimsical soundtrack that makes you feel like someone is constantly tapping you on the forehead with a spatula and you've got something that should suck. Fortunately for King Of California, Michael Douglas and Evan Rachel Wood paddle fast enough as actors to keep the whole movie from going over the edge and down the Niagara Falls of crappy cinema.Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood) is a 16 year old girl who lives alone in a big old house, drives a ramshackle station wagon and works at McDonald's. She's all alone because her mother ran off when she was nine and her father Charlie (Michael Douglas) has been in a state mental institution for the last 2 years. Charlie gets out and moves back in with Miranda, his bipolar looniness largely intact, and drags his daughter in a treasure hunt for lost Spanish gold from 1624. They wander the countryside, following decoded instructions from an old missionary's journal, eventually winding up breaking into a Costco and digging through the floor. That's where King of California takes a severe right turn out of indulgently amusing and into arbitrary drama with an ending that can be understood in two different ways, though I'm not sure these filmmakers could tell you which was the right way.Everything that's right about this movie flows out of the performances of Douglas and Wood. Charlie is a wonderful character who stumbles along the edge of mental health, never wanting to go over but never wanting to move back to where it's completely safe. Miranda is adorable as a young woman who can't deny her love for her father, no matter how much she might want to. Douglas and Wood are marvelous in crafting a relationship where it's never clear how much Charlie is pulling Miranda after him and how much she's walking arm in arm with him just so she can be close to her spacey dad. With the two of them almost constantly on screen together, King Of California is almost constantly enjoyable.Put two lesser actors in those roles and this film would have crashed hard and burned harder because there's so many things wrong with it. As previously mentioned, there are hardly any jokes for the first 50 minutes of this supposed comedy and not many more attempts at feeble situational humor. And outside of a few short flashbacks, there's also no actual drama in the movie until the very end. The viewer's interest has to entirely float along on the good feelings engendered by Douglas and Wood. And when the script does plunge into dramatics, it's so out of place and awkward it feels like the whole movie swallowed some mood-altering pharmaceutical. Drama needs conflict to survive and there just isn't any here. Charlie is portrayed as kooky but otherwise completely functional. Flashbacks show 9 year old Miranda suffering through a childhood of her mother's abandonment and her father's depression, but grown up Miranda doesn't show a single emotional or psychological scar from the experience. These are fundamentally happy people living fundamentally happy lives, despite all challenges, which is okay but not the stuff of wrenching emotional climaxes.King of California is an almost disaster that is salvaged into watchability by its male and female leads, proving that a movie doesn't have to be good at everything as long as it's great at one thing.

This is a great movie, I would recommend it to anyone. The writing is excellent, steering you through a crazy idea, and throughout the entire movie you're left wondering... is it real, or is he crazy? You get many hints both ways during the ride. The movie explores the strained relationship between father and daughter, and theirs is an especially broken one. Evan Rachel Wood and Micheal Douglas both do an outstanding job with their characters, and are thoroughly convincing.If you like low key Sundance-friendly movies that make you think, pick this one up.