“Max’s girlfriend Willow dumps him days before their departure on a Caribbean cruise. Unable to find a friend to come with him to experience the all-you-can-eat-buffet crowd, he goes it alone. A hipster in a strange land, Max can’t quite adjust to being out of his element until his playful lark evolves into an unexpected odyssey.

Directors Ben Chace and Sam Fleichner made good use of a cruise ticket won in a raffle to set the low-budget production in motion. Filmed with minimal crew and in a fluid, observational style, Max’s trip is set on the edges of real places and events, giving the story a fresh texture and vivid immediacy whether cruising the antiseptic chromed and carpeted staterooms of the ship or jubilantly witnessing the U.S. presidential election from a ramshackle Jamaican bar. At the same time, the film subtly and smartly subverts the audience’s expectations at every turn so that the viewer’s voyage of discovery comes to mirror Max’s. Along with him, we start to learn to slow down and enjoy the unexpected sights and sounds of the journey.” (official festival synopsis)

WAH DO DEM starts off strong, making quick work of giving the audience its “here Max goes on a cruise all by himself and it’s pretty weird” set up. Within five minutes, Max (Sean Bones) loses his girl, finds out all of his friends hated her, finds out all of his friends are flakes, and ends up on alone on a cruise ship populated by blue hairs. This would be enough – Max playing stranger in a strange land, a tight-panted American Apparel devotee kicking it with oldies during the day and partying with the cruise employees at night. It’s funny without being cloying. Chace and Fleichner let Max’s face and reactions tell the story, and it’s certainly fun enough.

Then Max de-boats in Jamaica to check the scene, and things all go to hell. Through his own staggering lack of clarity (the kid is pumped full of Red Stripes and weed, so we do have to give him some wiggle room), Max ends up stripped of just about everything that should be most valuable to someone traveling alone out of the country. It’s a traveler’s worst nightmare, and Max can only watch from the outside, disbelieving that it’s real. This, too, would have been enough – a fine, funny, dark little story, with Max at the center of it, trudging around with only a vague sense of purpose.

But then we hit the final third, and WAH DO DEM falters, and falters spectacularly. Max has kept relatively level regarding the increasingly insane events unfolding before him, so when we veer straight into some misplaced mysticism, it’s no surprise that Max approaches even that with the sleepy-eyed acceptance of a stoner. Max might not realize the problem, but we do – he’s not going to change. He hasn’t learned anything from his journey. He probably didn’t even want to. He’s been hit over the head with all sorts of new people and new situations, but his eyes aren’t opened, they are still at half-mast.

I’d be remiss to not give WAH DO DEM credit for experimental chutzpah. Despite being made on the cheap and the fly, it all looks pretty good. And Bones, despite not being a professional actor (he’s a singer), is fun and interesting to watch. But the letdown of the last third is palatable and obvious, compared to the subtle hilarity and promise of the first two acts.