"King of California" ** (out of four): Winking story of a mentally ill father on a quest for lost gold in southern California with his reluctant daughter isn't quite as cute as it thinks it is.

Watching "King of California" - the debut film from writer-director Mike Cahill - it helps to be familiar with the term "movie crazy". No, I'm not talking about someone who's crazy about movies (like, say, myself). "Movie crazy" is a type of mental deficiency shown in films where the lead character - in this case Michael Douglas' criminally delinquent absentee father - has lost his grip on reality but, really, he understands it so much better than the rest of us slaves to sanity. If only we could see the world the way he does, we'd be so much more enlightened. It's been known to work (in films like "Being There" and "Harvey"), but more often than not it's played to the affected hilt ("I Am Sam", "Nell", "Reign Over Me"). "King of California" is somewhere in between. It's not a bad character piece; it just isn't as cute as it thinks it is.

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