Search

» » Wah Do Dem (2009)

Short summary

Max lives in Brooklyn. He enjoys playing soccer, skateboarding, and drinking with his friends at local bars. Last summer he and his girlfriend, Willow, won a free cruise to Jamaica but two ... See full summary
Max lives in Brooklyn. He enjoys playing soccer, skateboarding, and drinking with his friends at local bars. Last summer he and his girlfriend, Willow, won a free cruise to Jamaica but two days before the trip she dumps him cold. When his friends flake, Max winds up alone on the high seas, navigating the crowds of gray-haired cruisers. Over the course of several days he flirts with the staff photographer, drinks cocktails with the boat's celebrity juggler and has several strange encounters with the only other loner.

Trailers "Wah Do Dem (2009)"

Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner have been friends since kindergarten. Two years ago Ben won a cruise in a raffle and invited Sam along for the vacation. Both young filmmakers, they decided to turn the trip into a project. With a mutual love for Jamaican culture and a free boat ride to the Caribbean, they began to map out the story's possible scenarios. Two additional cruise tickets were bought for Sean Bones, the lead, and Kevin Bewersdorf, sound recordists/actor. The crew of four boarded the luxury vessel in Red Hook, Brooklyn and sailed for one week. Once in Jamaica they were joined by producer, Katina Hubbard for two weeks of Island production.

User reviews


  • comment
    • Author: Mr.Death
    This is a US film shot on a microbudget, and yet is so fresh, original, and uplifting that it's overcome the modest means. The genesis for the movie is kooky, Ben Chace actually won two cruise tickets to Jamaica at a film festival event. So him and his buddy Sam decided to make a film out of that, and bought another two tickets, one for an actor and one for a crew member.

    So the film is about a young man who wins a cruise to Jamaica. He ends up alone and lonely on a cruise liner full of sextuagenarians and above. So when the ship docks in Jamaica he's got cabin fever and decides he's really going to go for some local flavour and keep clear of the tourist traps. What follows is a delightful and mind-expanding walkabout in tropical Jamaica, along with trials and tribulations. A lot of the scenes are improvised and almost documentary-like, and you can fully savour the freshness that comes out of that. Lady Luck has thrown a kind eye on these two filmmakers, at the time the film was being made Obama was winning the US presidential election and they capture a lot of the authentic unstaged Jamaican reaction to that, which is quite heartwarming.

    You've got an American teenager who for once actually looks like an American teenager you could know or meet and he's taken out of his cotton wool bubble-wrapped existence, going on a peregrination where he's hopefully going to let go of some of his need to systematise and understand, and he's going to open himself up to feeling and wonder and need.

    It's a beautiful movie, that leaves you with a sense of a very worldly profundity, and is very uplifting. Here's hoping that these two guys are getting a distribution deal, it would be richly deserved. Wah Do Dem would shake up the American Indie scene like it hasn't been shook up for a while.
  • comment
    • Author: Acebiolane
    What's been said in the other reviews is quite accurate. A wonderful film, made on a tiny budget in about 1 week. All true, and it's a great watch.

    Except for one little thing. The filmmakers thought injecting politics would be a good idea. It wasn't.

    There's nothing that will pull me out of a story, that will ruin the spell cast by a well written & acted script, like an injection of current politics.

    That really killed the momentum of the story for me, not just once, but several times throughout the movie.

    Next time, please, please! Just stick with the story...
  • Credited cast:
    Kevin Bewersdorf Kevin Bewersdorf
    Sean Bones Sean Bones - Max
    Carl Bradshaw Carl Bradshaw - Mystic Man
    Mark Gibbs Mark Gibbs
    Norah Jones Norah Jones - Willow
    Ira-Wolf Tuton Ira-Wolf Tuton
    All rights reserved © 2017-2024 hd.thomson-multimedia.com