Then There Was Joe

Then There Was Joe is the first film in the Arkansas Cinema Society's new Homegrown Film Series, and it's a worthy inaugural effort.

There are a lot of things to like about writer-director Justin Warren's comedy, which is, like every independently financed feature that actually gets projected on a screen for scrutiny by paying customers, a minor miracle. Warren and his collaborators have every right to be proud of the project. And good for the Arkansas Cinema Society for giving local filmmakers a venue in which to show and talk about their work.

Still, the job here is film criticism, not film attaboy-ism, and one would like to imagine that the young filmmakers would appreciate an honest critique. (Most seem to, or at least say they do.) And so it's fair to say that the best way to approach TTWJ is as a student film, an opportunity to learn and grow through doing. It's best received in a spirit of generosity, with leveled expectations.

From this perspective, it's easy to praise Warren's ambition -- he means to make a comedy with wide appeal rather than opting for the plausible deniability of random quirkiness (the inoculating antigen that allows ineptness and pathology to be mistaken for merit; see Tommy Wiseau's The Room) -- and resourcefulness (much of the movie was shot in and around his family home). He also plays a major role in the film and, like most of the cast, acquits himself quite well.

He's also smart enough to hire a professional to help him carry the movie, enlisting comedian Ray Grady, who is charismatic and credible in the sort of role in which Ice Cube has come to specialize -- a stereotypical hard case who, over the course of the film, develops a conscience.

It's a story you've seen before, a buddy picture that pairs an upright (uptight) citizen with an anti-establishmentarian so that they can both learn valuable life lessons as they ultimately bond. In this instance, Warren plays law student Ben, who's not only about to take the bar exam but looking for the right moment to propose to his fiancee (April Swinney). Into this stressful period is injected his older brother Joe (Grady), a gang-banger who is arrested for armed robbery.

Because their father is a prominent judge, Joe is allowed to stay at the family home while he awaits trial. And because the judge (played by former Little Rock school official James "Butch" Warren, the director's real father, who evinces an understated, dignified screen presence that falls somewhere on the spectrum between Steve Harvey and football coach/sports commentator Herm Edwards) has better things to do, Ben is assigned to be his brother's keeper.

While Warren is effective in his nebbish role and efficient and fairly clean as a director, what he is not, at least not yet, is a good writer. Then There Was Joe suffers from unnecessary convolution and the sort of Hollywood overtness that, to be fair, attaches to a lot of the popular comedies upon which the movie seems modeled (the Farrelly brothers' oeuvre and the Friday films might be reference points).

The script feels underwritten in its generally predictable arc and oddly and needlessly specific in some individual scenes. Another couple of passes through the script by a ruthless editor might have solved some of the problems it needlessly creates for itself.

For instance, using a television newscast to convey information, while not a particularly original device, is a perfectly fine technique. But a director should be aware that virtually everyone who's likely to see his movie is probably going to be familiar with how TV news reports look and sound. Judges do not routinely quash media reports that might be personally embarrassing, and if they tried to, the scandal would be worse than the initial publicity. (And since the reports don't get quashed anyway, the whole business is a pointless detour in a script.)

But Warren doesn't cave into sentimentality at the end, and the result is impressive if uneven in tone. He lets us know in the opening titles that the movie is based on -- or at least inspired by -- Warren's personal history. I'm guessing the best moments here are the ones drawn mostly from life. One senses a better, more nuanced and possibly sadder story beneath the putative jokes.

Anyway, Warren and his cast and crew should be proud of what they've made, even as they realize they'll probably be involved in better movies down the road. This is a good start -- for the ACS Homegrown series and the filmmakers.

Then There Was Joe will screen at at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 3 at Central Arkansas Library System's Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock's River Market. Tickets are $12 and include a post-screening Q&A with Warren and Grady and an after-party that begins at 9:30 p.m. at nearby Stickyz Rock 'N' Roll Chicken Shack. Tickets are available at arkansascinemasociety.org/events and information about Arkansas Cinema Society membership is available at arkansascinemasociety.org/membership.

MovieStyle on 01/26/2018