I Care A Lot: A Sociopathic Super Heroine

Written by Luke Barnes

I Care A Lot is a dark comedy film directed by J Blakeson. The plot follows the efforts of Marla Greyson (Rosamund Pike), a court appointed guardian, who defrauds those in her care for personal gain. However, one day she picks the wrong target and invokes the ire of a mob boss.

I did not care for this film at all.

The only pro I can give for this film is that, as usual, Pike is on excellent form and gives one hell of a performance. However, there character is unlikeable and there is really nothing the audience can connect to in her. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as you don’t always have to like the protagonist of the films you watch, but it becomes an issue when we are supposed to care about her survival. Personally, I found myself relating more to Peter Dinklage’s mob boss character.

Moreover, the writing is incredibly unbelievable to the point of Marla almost becoming a sociopathic superhero at times. We are supposed to view Marla as a crafty predator, who outwits her opponents, however in a physical sense she is shown to just be a regular human and yet she can’t seem to die; literally she survives definitive death after definitive death, and it gets a bit laughable after a point.

Finally, the narration seems to think it is clever and deep, yet it comes off as just the opposite of that and if anything a little try hardy. Not everyone can be American Psycho, stop trying.

Overall, Pike is giving the performance of her career so far, sadly it is in a deeply unlikeable film.

Pros.

The premise

Pike

Cons.

The audience has no way to connect to the character

You don’t care about the character, so it takes away from any tense or life and death sequences

The narration is not as smart as it thinks it is

Marla basically has superpowers as the result of bad writing

1.5/5