A hipster walkabout. Plaid-wearing slacker Max wins a Caribbean cruise, but shortly before sendoff gets dumped (vaguely) by his gal, leaving him to cruise solo. By the time the boat docks in Jamaica he is hungry for an authentic experience, and takes off to a remote beach with an old cat he meets at a chicken shack. He’s robbed off everything – shoes, passport, money, dignity – and tries to make his way to the embassy in Kingston. Shenanigans ensue.

I like how this film turns a hipster’s typical identity on its head – rather than being the one in the know, the cool cat, in Jamaica he’s just another white man – the butt of jokes and the target of thieves. He makes tepid contact with some locals, many who help him out, but overall there’s a baffled cultural divide between him and everyone else. It’s what’s exhilarating, and exhausting, about traveling, and the film nicely captures that. Sean Bones, the musician who plays Max, gamely goes along with this setup, and his many missteps got big laughs from the audience. But the film misses a bit of an opportunity to send-up hipsters. It seemed that their sympathies lie with Max and his ilk, and parts of the film had an insider, wink-wink sort of feel.

The scenes on the cruise ship, ironically, had an almost existential authenticity. Max wanders the halls in silence, and the daily routines of the boat have a narcotic effect. His loneliness is palpable. In the absence of an audience of his peers he is adrift. There is a wonderful bit by the film’s sound recordist Kevin Bewersdorf as a creepy Gatsby-type who stalks Max. But mostly he is alone, mechanically eating, staring out of portholes, and donning his “formal” white blazer and jeans for evenings. This is the only time in the film I felt anything for his character. Once on the island his melancholy lifts, replaced by Raybans and a smirk. As they say – no shirt, no shoes, no problem!

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