I Care A Lot, Film Review

I don’t care a lot for this movie. It seemed like a great premise from the Netflix trailer and started off strong, but about halfway through I started to get really irritated with the direction it was headed in. The film is about a corrupt legal guardian who targets the wrong old lady and chaos ensues. My issue with the film is that it tries to get us to care about evil characters and glorifies their monstrous actions. Trying to get an audience to care for an anti-hero is nothing new. However, for the most part we as an audience like the anti-hero despite their cruelty because we see glimpses of their humanity and good nature trying to peek through the bad. We’re rooting and hoping for their redemption. With this film, the main character and her accomplice have absolutely no redeemable qualities. They are pure evil and unchecked ambition. And yet it feels as though the director is trying to say – but they clearly love each other so care about them! The fact that two evil people are in a relationship and care about each other is not a good reason to make me care about them.

I get the sense that the director’s intentions are good. The purpose of the film is probably intended to bring awareness to the issue of abuses in the elder conservatorship and legal guardian system, while serving as a commentary on the fact that bad things happen in this world and most of the time the bad people behind them get away with it. But this film does more than that. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, it dangerously equates the main character’s evil and monstrous actions with “resilience,” “ambition,” and “a winner’s mindset”. There is a difference between drawing attention to the evils of this world and glorifying them. This film does the latter. And while the ending leaves you with some satisfaction, it is nowhere near enough. Yes this film might be trending as Netflix’s #1 but films don’t always trend because they’re deserving. If you’re curious to give it a watch do so at your own risk, and with the knowledge that it will probably leave you more frustrated than satisfied. I say it’s a hard pass.

(Note: this post was originally published February 25, 2021)