I don’t care at all. (review of I care a lot)

As you can tell by the title, we were not too impressed. And by “we” I mean me, my girlfriend and apparently the majority of audiences it seems, who had more than an earful to share about this two-houred confusion-fest.

I care a lot tells the story of Marla, a woman who forces elderly people into assisted-living facilities. Cut-off from the outside world, the victims have no way of knowing that Marla is selling off their homes, draining their accounts and financially bleeding them dry. Fully confident in her scam, and infuriatingly so I might add, she moves on to her next victim who seems like just another elderly widow. But when the Russian mob comes knocking at Marla’s door, looking for the old lady, things take a turn for the—who really cares.

Let me start off by saying that from a screenwriting point of view, the setup for this film could not have been better. Rosamund Pike did a fantastic job of depicting a character with zero, and I mean zero redeemable traits. The fact that the scheme she was running was based on real-life events, just made her actions so much worse, in turn, getting me more excited about the awful, deserved-payback she was bound to face. It was the absolute best setup for the revenge-plot. Finally, a chance for a film to do what Law abiding citizen didn’t have the foresight to do! In my mind Marla was going to pay dearly and I was going to love every moment of it. What happened next? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Marla and a very unintimidating mob-boss would go back and forth in a sort of nonthreatening-threatening way. Marla would also, not for a single moment, slow down or consider the disgusting treatment and torture she had perpetrated on the helpless for so long. She learns nothing along way and in fact, seems more determined than ever to up her reckless regard for others.

Marla also seems to be superhuman. There is nothing that the mob could do to her where she would not simply skip off into the sunset, twirling her pig-tails. To make matters worse, these “narrow” escapes were also not earned through hardship, struggle and growth, helping her overcome them. That’s a big nope! She would simply breeze around every obstacle in her way, unapologetic and smug in doing so. So where did it all go wrong? For starters, the film doesn’t seem to quite know what it’s trying to be, I mean, I found it on Netflix under Comedies…go figure. But the thing that bugs me most of all, is why? Why?!

Why would a talented Writer/Director such as Jonathan Blakeson disregard many, if not all writing-conventions, especially after a setup as perfect as this? I don’t believe it could’ve been a mistake which could only mean it was done on purpose. Perhaps it was an attempt at exploring some societal issue or perhaps they were trying to play with audience expectations by ignoring conventions all together, I don’t know. If this film was made this way to highlight the former then it failed cause it could not keep me entertained long enough to successfully lecture me on anything. In fact any attempt at lecturing would’ve certainly fallen on deaf ears as I was so blinded by sheer hatred for Marla. If, on the other hand, it was to try something new with genres or writing-conventions then I'd say they failed by the luck of the draw really. They tried something new and it just did not work.

And that’s it. Yep, that’s it. There’s really nothing more to mention about this film. Oh yeah, she gets shot and killed at the end but even that was disappointing to be honest. After sitting through two hours of watching this vile person just get away with everything, getting shot was too good for her. In the end it doesn’t really matter cause this film was a hard swing and a miss anyways. In fact, I don’t even think they were on the same field as the pitcher on this one. Don’t waste your time unless you like being enraged for two-hours.

07/03/2021 – 22:05