“Netflix’s ‘I Care A Lot’ succeeds in applying a distinctive plot but narrows on pacing.”
Hello again, fellow fans, welcome to the online film review of Cinema Perception. In this review, I will be discussing Netflix’s 2020 film “I Care A Lot.”
Starring Rosamund Pike as Marla Grayson, the story centralizes Grayson’s journey to success in America by scamming older people in favor of acting as their legal guardian. Due to her profession, Grayson finds out later that scamming does have consequences, whether it be professional or personal.
After watching “I Care A Lot,” I find this film to have a lot of successful traits. The first thing that the film does successfully is the plot. In watching Grayson’s character develop throughout the film, I found myself immersed in wanting to know what would happen to her after each scene. Another successful point that I saw in this film was the casting. When I saw Peter Dinklage play as Roman Lunyov, I wanted to root for Dinklage’s character right away. The third successful point of the film is that the genre is a blend of comedy and action. The fourth successful point that the film has is that it is a Netflix film which provided me free accessibility to pause the film. The last positive attribute of the film is the cinematography. There were some shots where I thought that it captivated the mood of the scene or the character.
Despite the film’s positives, I noticed several negative aspects of the film. The first issue is that there are frequent pacing issues. There are pacing issues throughout the film because of the frequent dialogue scenes. Therefore, the film’s runtime runs to almost two hours. Another issue with the film is that there is not enough body count in the film. Though it is a dark comedy, I felt this film could do it justice to have more action. In addition to the film having less of a body count, I find the main protagonist to be more of a villain rather than a heroine. Personally, a hero is someone who commits something selfishly without nothing to get in return. For Marla Grayson, her character appears to be on the threshold of antagonist and anti-hero since she would rather get something for herself and not care about the other person. Despite some of the issues that I have with the film, “I Care A Lot” still captivated my attention to watch the film from beginning to end.
Overall, “I Care A Lot” has many great successes with few issues throughout the film. For that, I give this film a 3 out of 5 stars for originality. ‘Til next issue, this is Nicholas Bartelmo signing off from Cinema Perception.
Nicholas Bartelmo is a fourth-year student studying for his bachelor’s in History. NB790429@wcupa.edu