Review by Anne Wollenberg
Stars Kevin Bewersdorf, Sean Bones, Carl Bradshaw, Mark Gibbs, Norah Jones, Ira-Wolf Tuton
Written by Ben Chace & Sam Fleischner
Produced by Katina Faye Hubbard
Certification UK 15
Runtime 76 minutes
Directed by Ben Chace & Sam Fleischner
Well, it sounds cool: a low-key slacker comedy that chucks an American hipster into rural Jamaica, to the tune of a painfully cool soundtrack. Max (Sean Bones) wins tickets to go on a Caribbean cruise, but girlfriend Willow (Norah Jones) takes the shine off by ditching him two days before departure, leaving Max to head off alone after failing to drum up some mates to take her place.
Off he goes to Jamaica, only to get robbed and miss his boat, leaving him heading for the American embassy in Kingston with nothing but the swimsuit he’s wearing, via nighttime reggae jams, soccer games, tripping prophets parties to celebrate Obama’s election. Or, to put it another way, a white guy bumbles around Jamaica for a bit.
Wah Do Dem, or What They Do, has a plot structure borne out of circumstance: co-director/writer Ben Chace won a cruise in a raffle and cooked up a plan with Sam Fleischner, his friend since childhood, to turn their free jolly into a film-making opp. They’ve made a film that looks rather glorious, capturing dreamy, bright colours with their handheld DV, and added indie street cred by bringing in the likes of Yeasayer, MGMT and the Congos.
So it’s filmed in the style of a documentary – a quirky, indie travelogue made up of a series of vignettes stitched together. The problem is that it’s just a touch too amateur. Not in terms of the basic concept, or the production, but the failure to distinguish between the mundanities of real life and the rare gem, here and there, that’s interesting enough to put in a film. As a result, we see Max sit down with Willow and ask her: “So, are you psyched for this cruise or are you psyched for this cruise?” when snappier script-writing would have been preferable to this kind of realistic mumbling.
Wah Do Dem has its moments – funny ones, poignant ones – and for a film made on a micro-budget, it’s quite impressive to look at. But without a better script and a more focused sense of momentum, it’s all too much like looking at somebody else’s holiday snaps. You’re sure they look exciting, but you can’t shake the feeling that to appreciate them, you had to be there.