World Cinema
“Wah Do Dem”

Friday 16th October NFT2
Saturday 17th October Studio
Sunday 18th October ICA

I’d spent nearly a week eagerly waiting to get the screener from the DVD library, and in that time I’d increased the expectation on this little micro-budget film’s wee shoulders. Why the frenzied expectation? I don’t know whether it was the glowing official festival synopsis, Norah Jones’ name (playing Max’s girlfriend, is barely in the film at all) or the dialectic title, “Wah Do Dem”, which basically means What They Do; it was probably the latter, I haven’t forgiven Jones for “Blueberry Nights”. As I slipped the DVD into my European DVD player – yes, I had to watch the film in black and white – I wondered if it would live up to my expectations.

In the first fifteen minutes, the film brilliantly thrusts Max into our faces, in a kind of ‘this is Max, he has been dumped by his girlfriend, all his friends think she’s a bitch anyway but never thought to mention this to him till now, plus on top of this break-up he has to go on a cruise to Jamaica by himself because all his so-called friends are ‘working’’. This set-up is such a strong start, however, the rest of the film fluctuates in its tone and never really retains the heady punch of the start.

The film spends too long dealing with Max’s boredom abroad a ship, in which the average age is over sixty, that you share his ennui and become irritated by the questionable handheld camera use, but once the ship hits land the audience and Max welcome the sounds of the Jamaican landscape. Hoping for an authentic Jamaican experience, Max meets and befriends a local who offers to take him to swim on a beach unpopulated by tourists. Emerging from his swim, he finds that all his belongings including his clothes and passport have been stolen. As the cruise leaves without him, the ‘understanding’ guard tells the bare-footed Max, for any assistance, he must make the journey to the US embassy in Kingston, four hours away.

“Wah Do Dem”’s strength is that it cleverly subverts both Max’s and the audience’s expectation simultaneously. Sean Bones isn’t a great actor, in fact he’s actually a singer, so I cannot hold it against him, but his portrayal as Max is perfectly likable in his stoner-cum-doofus-cum-gap-year-student wandering vagueness and naivety. While the other star of the film, Jamaica, is treated with a well-meaning adulation, viewing the island with a breathtaking beauty and wonder, however, the directors quickly revert to tired cliches that add nothing to what we all ready know about Jamaica.

The thing about “Wah Do Dem” is that it doesn’t really go anywhere and, like Max, meanders. Nothing dramatic ever happens, even when witnessing the unlikely predicaments that Max unwittingly finds himself, which reads like a catalog of every travelers worst nightmare, you know he is never in any real danger. But does it really matter? If you think about it, it is rather apt that the film retains a laid-back attitude fitting of its location. “Wah Do Dem” isn’t to be taken serious, but simply to be enjoyed, and you know what, I did.