What are they doing? A scene from Wah Do Dem.Indie Irie
By Ed Rampell
Co-directors/co-writers Sam Fleischner and Ben Chace’s Wah Do Dem (What They Do) is a quirkily charming tale about a blonde Brooklyn screw-up named Max (Sean Bones) whose girlfriend (played by the musician Norah Jones) dumps him shortly before they are to depart on a cruise to Jamaica.
By Ed Rampell
Co-directors/co-writers Sam Fleischner and Ben Chace’s Wah Do Dem (What They Do) is a quirkily charming tale about a blonde Brooklyn screw-up named Max (Sean Bones) whose girlfriend (played by the musician Norah Jones) dumps him shortly before they are to depart on a cruise to Jamaica.
Unable to give her ticket away to friends, Max embarks on the anticipated Caribbean journey alone. The shrewd filmmakers with their minimalist equipment cleverly managed to shoot their low budge feature aboard an actual passenger ship during its voyage to the Caribbean.
After the cruise ship makes landfall at Jamaica Max is kind of marooned there, where this stranger in a strange island proceeds to have a series of picaresque misadventures. The fish out of water has the wah wahs and ha has as he encounters mystical musicians, low lifes, high Rastafarians, soccer players, sexy dancers and more as he tries to return to his “native” island of New York. In a sense, Wah Do Dem is a modern twist on Robinson Crusoe type of sagas about white Western beachcombers who have close encounters with Third World islanders. You know, the old “life among the ‘savages’” syndrome.
The indie’s action plays out against the portentous background of the actual election eve victory of presidential candidate Barack Obama, which seems to indicate some sort of cross-cultural meaning. Nevertheless, this is mostly a lighthearted feature and the protagonist never develops a close relationship with any of the Jamaicans he encounters, let alone a romance. Unlike other features shot there such as the first James Bond pic, 1962’s Dr. No, Wah Do Dem’s cinematography does not really reveal how stunningly beautiful Jamaica is. Max’s island experiences do not lead him toward a deeper, higher consciousness. To tell you the truth, Max is pretty lame and the actor who plays him – reggae musician Bones -- is funny but not especially attractive, although he does have a goofy appeal. Nonetheless, Wah Do Dem reminded me of my own wayward youth wandering around the South Seas Islands, and I enjoyed this good-natured and occasionally thoughtful amiable romp. A Jamaican woman in the audience commented that the film actually captured some of “the nuances” of Jamaica’s culture and character, and the filmmakers’ love of that unique isle shines through.
Wah Do Dem is nominated for the Los Angeles Film Festival’s $50,000 Narrative Competition prize. As one of its co-directors said that the feature’s entire budget was equal to one day of catering for the crew on another LAFF offering, Johnny Depp’s Public Enemies, if Wah Do Dem does win this award it will probably be bigger than the movie’s production and advertising budget.
The indie’s action plays out against the portentous background of the actual election eve victory of presidential candidate Barack Obama, which seems to indicate some sort of cross-cultural meaning. Nevertheless, this is mostly a lighthearted feature and the protagonist never develops a close relationship with any of the Jamaicans he encounters, let alone a romance. Unlike other features shot there such as the first James Bond pic, 1962’s Dr. No, Wah Do Dem’s cinematography does not really reveal how stunningly beautiful Jamaica is. Max’s island experiences do not lead him toward a deeper, higher consciousness. To tell you the truth, Max is pretty lame and the actor who plays him – reggae musician Bones -- is funny but not especially attractive, although he does have a goofy appeal. Nonetheless, Wah Do Dem reminded me of my own wayward youth wandering around the South Seas Islands, and I enjoyed this good-natured and occasionally thoughtful amiable romp. A Jamaican woman in the audience commented that the film actually captured some of “the nuances” of Jamaica’s culture and character, and the filmmakers’ love of that unique isle shines through.
Wah Do Dem is nominated for the Los Angeles Film Festival’s $50,000 Narrative Competition prize. As one of its co-directors said that the feature’s entire budget was equal to one day of catering for the crew on another LAFF offering, Johnny Depp’s Public Enemies, if Wah Do Dem does win this award it will probably be bigger than the movie’s production and advertising budget.
