A dishwashing machine and the faraway eyes of a young girl, Miranda(Evan Rachel Wood), a sixteen-year-old high school dropout, who doesn't wish for anything more than a domestic appliance; because Charlie(Michael Douglas), her destitute father, leaves his food-encrusted dishes for his daughter to wash when she returns home after performing double-shifts at a McDonalds, is the indelible image in "King of California", an agreeable film about family blood. It's thick. Charlie suffers from a mental illness, but that doesn't mean he gets a free pass from the considerable fallout that his two-year absence from Miranda's life created. Miranda doesn't have the trappings of a normal teenaged girl. She looks at that dishwashing machine like how girls look at their boyfriends. "King of California" scores points in the realism department by showing how Charlie's eccentricities aren't cute, but have ramifications for his daughter's welfare. Blood is thick, however, and it's only fitting that there is water under Costco's floor.… Expand

An embarrassingly bad movie. Promoted by the makers of the classic "Sideways," Alexander Payne and Michael London should be chagrined by this offering. Of course, it was all nepotism, as the director of this wretched film was a film school chum of Payne's. Sad.

Sideways Lite --- very lite.

Narration is TERRIBLE, very much like that in "Into the Wild"; somehow they made Wood seem like she was just some crappy 17-year-old actress. Michael Douglass is okay, but his character has zero dynamic range. "Manic daddy!" The script and direction are cheesmo. Camera work is lame. Pretty mediocre. Probably made my life a tiny bit worse. A lot of people will probably like it. :)

Good for what it is, and very watchable, but lacking in overall depth of characters and story line. After the first thirty minutes the story doesn't go much further that what is already established.

It sucked. An unlikable movie.

Wow. Three zeros already. I guess the "Don't like it give it a 0, like it give it a 10" crowd is out early today. I wish you armchair film critics would just go crawl into a cave and die.

Modest as you're watching it, crumby in its aftertaste. In order to justify its existence, this cutsy-quirky picture (featuring the requisite flat-voiced girl narration, no less) would have had to have had a towering performance from one or both of the leads whereas these are only just passable.

As someone with a mother who has a mental illness and father who has no substance, this movie hit home. Wood portrayed how it really is to have to take care of one's self. If people do not understand what life is like living with someone like that, I guess it would not ring true. This is an elegantly done movie.

I'm giving it a ten just to piss off the dopes who gave it a zero or a 3. It's a good movie,and it demands some emotional stretching on the viewers part. Do the work, for chrissake and you'll be entertained.

Great vehicle for Michael Douglas. While the plausibility of the story is admittedly far-fetched, the film did not take itself too seriously, which enabled it to make its points about the socitey's definition of sanity and the suffocating encroachment of suburban development and modern merchandising of food (McDonalds) and goods (Costco) in a poignant way. Thus, it's entirely understandable that a certifiably crazy person (by modern society's standards) seeks treasure from California's historic past underneath the concrete floor of a Costco ('They've got everything...'), and finds it.… Expand

Great Acting, Great Script, Light Hearted and Real Suspense. Shot well, you could feel the California Sun coming off the screen. Basically I would compare it to the first Indiana Jones Movie But with a Nut Job in the Lead! This is a why not go see this movie, movie. Definitely worth the price of the ticket! I laughed, I Cried, I ate Popcorn. 3 Thumbs Up!

Despite being somewhat 'lite' in substance, this has got to be the only movie I have seen with Michael Douglas that I liked. He dumps his massive ego for a movie, that for me, was mesmerizing. The ending, was amazing. I have never seen anything quite like it. I would encourage everyone who gave this a 0, to actually watch it.