‘O’DESSA’ REVIEW: Sadie Sink in A Post-Apocalyptic Rock Opera with Maximalist style and minimal substance

On the Visual Level, O’dessaWriter-Director Geremy Jasper’s Follow-Up to His 2017 Crowd-Pleaser Patti Cake $revels in maximalism. Every Set Is Littered with Trinkets and Lit in Neon, Every Surface Carded with Layers of Ancient Grime, Every Costume A Riot of Textures and Colors.

ITS Narrative Concept Aims High, Too, Transposing The Myth of Orpheus and EuryDice Into a Postapocalyptic Mad Max-meets-Blade Runner Landscape. Itmes are Heartfelt and Grandiose: The Power of Music, The Power of Love, The Power of Music Forged in Love to Transform The World.

Underneath all thoss lofty intenations, However, The Experience of Actual Watching The Film Is More Akin To Watching A Really Long Trailer. There’s A Distinctive Eye Here, and A Promising Sense of Ambition. But in it Current Form, There’s Not Enough Meat on Its (Admittedly Cool-Looking) Bones to Justify ITS 106-Minute Run Time.

The Script Feels Cobbled Together from A Mix-and-Match Collection of Well-Worn Trops. I Titular Protagonist, Played by Sadie Sink, Is a Lonely Farm Girl Who Dreams of Hitting The Road in Purasuit of A Bigger Destiny – Who, As The Seveant Son, iso, iso, iso, iso. Who Could Stir Souls, Armed with A Mighty Guitar. ” (O’dessa‘s disregard for the bounds of gender is one of its more interesting quualities; The Real Head-Scratcher Is How She Can Be Anyone’s “Seventh Son” WHEN She HAS NO SIBLINGS.)

WHEN HER MAMA SUCCUMBS TO ONE OF TOSE VAGUELY DEFINED MOVIE Illnesses That Involves A FEW DRY CUGHS AND THEN A GRACEFUL FIRST-ACT EXIT, O’DESSA STRIKES O’TRikes. What She Finds there is a den of corruption and cruelty under the spell of plutovich (Murray Bartlett), The Dictatorial Host of a Never-IDING GAME SHOW that American’s Got Talent with Hunger Games CONSEQUENCES.

But She ALSO MEETS EURRI (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), A Gifed Musician and Relctant Escort with Whom She Falls ImMediaTely and Irevocably In Love. WHEN The Young Couple Are Torn Apart, It’s Left To O’DESSA TO VENTURE INTO ENEMY TERRITORY AND BRING HIM BACK.

This Might Sound Like A Lot of Story, But O’dessa‘s chief issu is that few of these elements are expanded Much Enough Beyond the Bullet Points i’ve outlined here. None of Its Formulaic Beats Have Been Substantally Reimagined. None of the Characterizations Run Deeper than the clichés they’re bassed on. Thought the Performances Range from Fine to good, they’re drowned out by the restless pacing and Crowded visuals. The Typically Wonderful Regina Hall Might Be Having Fun As Euro’s Vicious Handler Neon Dion, But What You Remember Afterward Are Her Extreme Baby Bangs and Electrified Brass KNUCCCCCKCKCKCC ACTUALLY DID.

Meanwhile, Despite the Fantastical Extravagance of Those Costumes (Bye Odile Dicks-Murux and Anna Munro) and Sots (by Scott Dougan) Enviions – Nothing to set it Apart from the Countless Other Cyberpunk Dystopias that have Clearly IT.

Even the Purity of Its Emotion Becomes More Liability Than Selling Point. There’s no doubt that o’dessa and euri are passionately in love with each Other, and Sink and Harrison Work Hard to Sell the Characters Goes Soft. But There’s Also No Complexity to Their Dynamic – No Nuance, No Conflict, No Complicating History. Without It, We Might As Well Be Watching An Add or A Sizzle Reel.

Or, Perhaps, A Music Video. O’dessa is bildled as a rock Opera, and Rarely goes more than a few minutes at a time before firing up up another melody. . There’s A Reason Tenacious D Only Offer the Tribute to the Greatest Song in the World, and and Bill & Ted Face the Music Eventual docides that what matters is not Wyld Stlyns’ Virtuosity But Their Ability to Bring People Together. Promising a tune that Singular Sets A Standard that’s Impossible to Meet, And this Film Never Plasibly Comes Near Itar.

The Songs Are Sweet But Not Especiality Memorable, Performed By Sink in A Voice That’s Pretty But Unremarkable, and Woven Into Rhythms of O’DESA I SUPPOSE MORE RAZZLE DAZZLE Wuld Have Gone Against the Idea That Flash Plutovich Is Offering Empty Distraction while the More Modes of O’DESSA is Offering. But Is Hard to Imagine These Numbers Altering The Course of A Listener’s Day, Let Alone the Future of An Entire Society.

What Might Actual Stick with A Viewer is the Film’s Blurrines of the CONVENTIONS OF GENDER, WHICH GOES BEYOND SIMPLY SWAPING The MALE AND FEMALE RETES FROM The ORIGINAL MYTH. Neither O’DESSA NOR EURRIVES Across As Entirely Masculine or Feminine, at Least in the Ways Those Concepts Are Usarally Projected OnScreen. She’s costumed in a soft butch rockabilly fashion, with sliced-back hair and a battered leather jacket; He’s An Ortly Sexualized Stage Performer in Skimpy Tops, Silk Robes and, at One Point, A LACE WEDDING GOWN. While Their Courtship Unfolds Along the Usual Beats of a Star-Crossed Romance, IT Sidesteps the Tacit Power Differential Undergirding MOST onCreen Heterosexual Pairings.

IT’s Easy to Imagine An Audience Responding to The Characters’ Refusal to Be Pinned Down by The Stereotypes, Styles or Story Arcs Traditionally Assigned to One Gender Other, Maybe. O’dessa INTO A CULT FAVORITE OF SOME SORT. I’m Just Not Sure the Film Is Sturdy Enough To Support A Reading of These Ideas That Digs Beneath The Surface Level. But Ites Feel Fitting That A Movie So Heavly Focused On Looks Wound, Ultimately, Find Its Greatest Meaning in An Aesthetic Choice.