Bottom line (right at the top): Youâre either going to willfully stand on the tracks and love every second of OâDessa (now streaming on Hulu) as it runs you over, or youâre going to hop a different train to another zip code after 10 minutes. Geremy Jasperâs long-in-the-works follow-up to 2017âs misfit-rapper saga Patti Cake$ is a musical crossed with a fable crossed with a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller, and has all the stuff of a passion project. Whether that passion translates to the audience is the question.
OâDESSA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Some opening text tells us that the world has been âpoisonedâ and most of the survivors live in a place called Satylite City, ruled by an egomaniacal entertainer named Plutonovich (Murray Bartlett), whoâs like Max Headroom meets Donald Trump meets Zod (as in âkneel beforeâ) meets whatever Stanley Tucci was in The Hunger Games. OâDessa (Sadie Sink, Stranger Things) doesnât live there, though. She and her ailing mama (Bree Elrod) dwell on a dried-out husk of earth oâer yonder. She sings to a scarecrow of her father (Pokey LaFarge), a traveling troubadour with a magic guitar who sang to âcomfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.â She got the gift of singinâ and strumminâ from him, as well as a story about how sheâs the seventh son whoâll save the world with a song. That guitar, shipped back in a coffin after he died, is buried out in the yard, because Mama didnât want OâDessa to take it and wander far from the fam like her old man did. But Mama has a cough, the type that kills people in movies when the plot needs it to. And so OâDessa buries her mother, cuts her hair into a pompadour with a dangling curl, digs up the six-string and gets to walkinâ.
Destiny awaits in Satylite City, but itâs waylaid when a batch of friendly singing hobos led by a preacher steal OâDessaâs heirloom instrument and leave us wondering if she can save the world playing air guitar. Probably not, so she quests to find it, and it doesnât take very long at all. Satylite is a big place but whaddaya know, itâs hanging right in that there pawn shop. Not that she has the money to get it back, or the skills to charm the battleaxe behind the counter, who, like so many people in these parts, stares lobotomically at Plutonovich on the teevee. So she scraps together a gee-tar out of found objects and heads to a club to play for an audience and hopefully win a little scratch.
None of it, though, will they have: She gets booed off the stage. They will, however, have plenty of Euri Dervish (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who owns the drag-queen catwalk thanks to his big-show presentation and even bigger voice. We learn that Euri is the sad, exploited puppet of Neon Dion (Regina Hall), a thoroughly terrifying individual in wicked S&M leather and electrified brass knuckles, and wearing teensy bangs with no eyebrows, leaving so much⦠space up there between the eyes and hairline. She pimps out Euri for cash. But Euri and OâDessa fall in lurve, enough so itâs like, hey, what about the guitar? We still worried about that? What if someone else buys it? Can she put it on layaway or steal it or something? Folk tend not to think about practicalities when theyâre getting some, especially when itâs fresh, but OâDessa will have to dig in and focus eventually, if she wants to bring her axe of destiny to Plutonovichâs scary Onederland island and fulfill her chosen-one prophecy.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Jasperâs aesthetic is somewhere between The Hunger Games and Blade Runner, with a neon fetish (and nonbinary presentation of characters) that made me recall how great I Saw the TV Glow was.Â
Performance Worth Watching: Sink and Harrison seem a little hung out to dry thanks to some flimsy material, leaving Hall â in her nutty, nutty garb â as the most memorable among the thinly rendered characters here.
Memorable Dialogue: Hall hisses this nasty little threat to OâDessa: âIf I ever see you near my piggybank again, I will shuck open your guts and yank the pearl from your rotten greezy little oyster.â
Sex and Skin: Poistcoital cuddles only.
Our Take: One express ticket to Poughkeepsie, please. And please hurry. No no itâs fine, keep the change, I gotta go. Which is to say OâDessa didnât work for me, despite Jasperâs obvious ambition. He overstuffs every frame with oodles and scads of detail, but didnât dedicate enough time and effort to crafting an original story with depth and nuance. The characters are far from fleshed out, and they never truly explore the crazy world in which they live, and that spikes the audienceâs curiosity. Tonally, itâs humorless in blatant spite of all the crazy visuals, and doesnât lean into its earnestness; itâs just blah, resulting in a hollow parable that feels cobbled together out of too many ideas and influences dropped on a rickety narrative foundation.
So the filmâs a weird conglomeration of cinematographic vision with overly familiar dystopian chosen-one tropes. The songs are nice enough â Sink has quite the pretty voice â but unmemorable, and couched within underwhelming choreography (perhaps a result of budgetary limitations). And thematically, a lot of ripe, delicious fruit is left to rot on the vine; despite his big dumb reality show thatâs like American Idol meets The PTL Club, Plutonovich is just a generic obnoxoid, and the screenplay shows no interest in digging into the cult-of-personality madman-leader story elements that might bring to mind certain People In Charge Around Here. OâDessa has so much going on, yet feels naggingly irrelevant and insubstantial on all fronts. Itâs likely destined to find long-term traction as a cult film, but it never worked for me in the slightest. It inspires admiration and ridicule in equal measure.
Our Call: Itâs simple: Style trumps substance in this one. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘O’Dessa’ on Hulu, a Postapocalyptic Musical Heavy on Eye Candy and Light on Substance appeared first on Decider.
