Anyone yearning for a very, very, very, very (very!) 90s pastiche might raise an eyebrow at Jam (now streaming on Hulu), the unconventional writing and directing debut of veteran character actor Keir O’Donnell. Okay, maybe there’s something of the late ’80s here, too, as O’Donnell indulges in a shot of two inmates on bunk beds that’s stolen wholesale from Raising ArizonaAnd maybe you can justify such blatant theft in the service of a movie about a bank robbery, if you’re feeling generous. Strange things” Joe Keery and Daisy Jones and the Six Emmy nominee Camila Morrone headlines the bill, fully entrenched in O’Donnell’s thick, saccharine quirkiness, which only works for you if you haven’t seen all of the movies she references dozens of times before (she said she’s seen the movies she references dozens of times before).
JAMSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: One of the first things we noticed about Jam It’s like his score centers on the staggering warbles of a musical saw, which implies quite strongly, What you are about to see here is completely ridiculous.And what’s absolutely ridiculous is this main character, Baron (Keery), who says things like “I swear on my hair” in the languid drawl of an uneducated moron, and that hair is clearly a very poor quality wig (poor quality on purpose or just plain poor quality, it’s hard to tell). Two minutes into it, this movie is already dragging its hands against the cat’s hair, but we must continue. Baron has been handcuffed, booked, booked, and shoved into a cell with his new bunkmate Otis (Aldis Hodge), who calls Baron “blud” at first to intimidate him but eventually as a term of endearment. It’s not long before the two are talking about getting out of this place, and Baron offers Otis $250,000 to help him out. Otis wants to know how this moron managed to get his hands on a quarter million, and so we’re reminded of what happened as Baron narrates his story.
So: Once upon a time, there was a poor, hard-working, small-town ignoramus who delivered mail so he could pay for his sick mother Eda’s (Amy Warner) expensive medication, which he stuffs into a mooncake and hands to her. Except he gets fired for refusing to get a haircut, which tells us his priorities are way off. I mean, his mother is bedridden on respirators and one step away from the grave, and he doesn’t want to go to goddamn Supercuts to get it cut? Baron lies on the ground in despair as much as an organism with significant brain cell deficiencies can despair when an impossible creature shows up in a bright blue vintage convertible: Marmalade (Morrone). She’s an impulsive tornado of faux fur and pink hair, all sexy and crazy in mid-calf cowboy boots. Baron is mesmerized. “From now on,” our idiot tells Otis, “we were inseparable,” and that’s not a typo, it’s a joke, please laugh!
Of course, Marmalade has nowhere to stay (she says she’s a former foster child who, say it with me, left RUNNOFT years ago), so Baron brings her home to meet his mother and turn everything upside down. She has a solution to the problem of how we’re going to pay for Mom’s prescriptions: “We’re going to rob a bank!” she snaps, then pulls out a gun that makes the Guns of Navarone look like a blowgun. Okay, then. The saw chirps extra dumbly and Marmalade cackles like a hyena on nitrous oxide as she and poor dumbass Baron — whom she calls “Puppet.” Puppet! — make love, lick ice cream off our faces, and plan to rob the First United Savins ‘n’ Loans, which is a few towns away. So, Otis, that is How did you get this bag of money? Are you coming in or out?
What movies will it remind you of? Jam It is a shameless pastiche of Wild at heart, True romance and Raising Arizonawith a burst of Bonnie and Clyde in the mosaic, and an ending with enough rug-pulling that you can’t help but remember how you obsessively watched The Usual Suspects a couple dozen times between 1995 and 1999.
Performance worth watching: It’s easy to appreciate Hodge’s serious, solid work when much of the film around him reeks of effort and dedication.
Memorable dialogue: A snippet of the over-the-top vulgarisms that make up Baron’s speech: “Dear sweet lord, I pray that you and Mama will take Marmalade and that little one in your arms today and protect them during the robbery.”
Sex and skin: Kisses and silhouettes of Baron and Marmalade mixing together.
Our opinion: Yeah Jam It was a pair of boxers and you’re thinking about putting them on, they’ll feel like silk or sandpaper. There’s no middle ground here. You either love them or you slather cream on the bottoms to relieve the irritation. Count me in the second group, the main problem being that O’Donnell so predominantly displays her influences that it inspired me less to continue with this story, more to rewatch some of the most formative films in my history of cinema appreciation. Agreed: Jam It’s not entirely derivative; in fact, it sheds its flashier detours and flourishes for the final stretch, which tends toward something more endearing and at least a little more original. But by then it had sunk too far into a hole and redemption simply wasn’t in the cards.
The first hour is just too exhausting with its super-quirky soundtrack, over-the-top, overbearing protagonists, off-the-wall narrative twists, and Shakespeare-quoting prison guards; it’s all deliberately too much, too much to really get through in order to enjoy the myriad, somewhat unpredictable third-act twists that pile up like cold cuts in a Dagwood sandwich. It’s hard to feel the adrenaline rush of young madmen in love when the performances are too over-the-top and off-the-wall for their own good, and the small-town comedy feels so forced. written that splashes like wobbly, overfilled water balloons. I appreciate that O’Donnell is playing with ideas about the nature of storytelling, as she plays with unreliable narrators and uses exaggeration with a purpose, though it is ultimately calculated and derivative. Jam But here’s the thing: I never got bored, but I never got angry either, you know?
Our calling: This Jam It’s not sweet enough. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
