I love watching Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage act, so I couldn’t resist watching their new film, I Care a Lot, on the day it was released (on Amazon Prime – a company I do not promote but have not yet succeeded in completely boycotting).
I Care a Lot, written and directed by J Blakeson, concerns the timely subject of guardianship, a growing industry that focuses on providing court-appointed guardians for older people deemed unable to take care of themselves. In I Care a Lot, Marla Grayson (Pike) runs a guardianship company that ‘specializes’ in providing the court with embellished medical reports on wealthy older people with no family or relatives, resulting in Grayson becoming their legal guardian. Grayson places these older people in a specific care home (where she can control them), sells off their estates and ‘legally’ makes a lot of money (the goal of her life). However, Grayson doesn’t realize what she’s let herself in for when Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest) becomes her latest victim.
To avoid spoilers, I won’t say more about the plot, though I am by no means recommending that you endanger your soul by watching this cold dark psychological thriller-‘comedy’.
The acting of Pike and Dinklage was everything I had hoped for and expected: brilliant. But the characters they play (indeed, all of the characters in the film) are hollow and shallow, by which I mean they are lacking in both a moral compass and in any meaningful character development. They are thus incapable of eliciting an ounce of sympathy. Apparently this is forgivable in a dark comedy.
Critics, who generally like the film, write things like: “The core conceit … is upsetting and infuriating, but Blakeson puts such a colourful over-the-top sheen on it … that you can’t help but be entertained by the criminal carnage and extreme shenanigans” (Truitt) and “a vicious and cheerfully twisted psychological thriller dripping in deception and dread” (Roeper) and “for those who prefer their pulp to carry the faint aroma of moral rot, this movie is a real treat” (Murray). I agree that I Care a Lot is vicious, upsetting and full of moral rot, and even that the film is entertaining, but I felt my soul being drained with every passing minute and that’s a steep price to pay for entertainment.
Critics also describe I Care a Lot as a satire of capitalism and the guardianship industry. That sounds like a good thing and I love good satire. This isn’t it. Besides the flawed moral compass (revealed throughout but especially in the violent ending), the film suffers from some massive plot holes (apparently also forgivable in a dark comedy).
I Care a Lot has no heart and deserves no stars at all, but I’ll give it one star for the great acting, especially by Pike. * My mug is down.