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Mike Cahill, King of California

by Kathryn Durfee
11/20/2007

"Sometimes, you gotta know when to give up." But sometimes, you shouldn't give up at all. Especially when you believe a wealth of 17th century Spanish treasure is buried beneath your local Costco.

In Mike Cahill's debut film, King of California, Michael Douglas plays Charlie, an unstable dad recently released from a mental institution. He is now the responsibility of his 16-year old daughter Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood). After being left by her mother, Miranda had to drop out of school and work doubles at McDonald's in order to pay the bills while her father was away.

Emancipated from her parents, Miranda builds a quiet life for herself in the family home. When Charlie returns, he turns Miranda's world upside down with the idea that there is buried treasure somewhere in the Santa Clarita valley. Armed with old maps, a memoir found in the hospital library, and records obtained from the Spanish embassy (what would we do without the internets?), he ropes Miranda into following him through what are now golf clubs, Applebee's, and Petco parking lots in the search for gold.

At first, the search is hopeless. Miranda is convinced that her father is still crazy; two years in a mental institution apparently did nothing to resolve this. As they traipse around in bushes and on highway shoulders, Charlie with a metal detector and Miranda a flashlight, the two observe what has happened to the world around them. What used to be an expanse of wild land is now suburbia. Miranda begins to believe her father might be on to something when the pair finds an old Doubloon, three crosses engraved on a rock, and pottery shards, all clues saying they're on the right path. Concluding that the treasure rests beneath the local Costco, Charlie makes plans to excavate.

What better place to dig for buried treasure than Costco? A particularly funny scene finds Charlie, equipped with land surveying tools, instructing Miranda to stretch a tape measure almost fifty feet across the store in the middle of the day. People stare, but no one seems too surprised. But then again, Costco is the type of place you would be likely to find some crazies walking around with metal detectors.

Charlie says it best, exclaiming "I love this place! They've got everything!" From jackhammers to scuba gear, Costco provides Charlie with everything he needs to pull off their midnight dig. With this elaborate plan, Charlie makes one last effort to be a good father and follow a new version of the American Dream.

Loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, King of California's Charlie is a little more Don Quixote than Prospero, and a little more Crazy McNutjob than anything else. It was only a matter of time before Michael Douglas flew over his own cuckoo's nest, I suppose. Regardless of outward appearance, his Charlie has an underlying charm that ultimately convinces Miranda to follow him on this seemingly insane journey.

What appears at first to be full-blown insanity is not overplayed by Douglas but is instead transformed into obsession. He believes in the treasure and what man would shy away from an opportunity at fortune? In this sense, Charlie is a lot more sane and interesting than the "normal" people around him.

Evan Rachel Wood, who made name for herself with the dark film Thirteen, plays the frightened but hard-working Miranda perfectly. Only 19 at the time of filming, Wood was the perfect choice to play a daughter forced to grow up too early. Miranda looks at her father with hope, but is scared that he will hurt her again.

King of California is clever, darkly funny, and touching. It's always nice when a film offers the audience new characters and an original story. A new twist on both the father/daughter relationship and a modern-day heist film, California is a crowd-pleaser. The story is absurd, but the audience is more than willing to go along on the quest. King of California is definitely worth seeing, a welcome change from predictable blockbusters with no heart.

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