MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Lunatic’: A Festive Trip to Jamaica

The greatest pleasure in the new Jamaican comedy “The Lunatic” (NuWilshire) is the sound of the actors speaking. The Jamaican lilt is so lulling and sensual that “The Lunatic” could be quite a bit worse than it is and it would still be worth checking out. The rhythmic swing of the language carries you past the dull, dumb stretches. But even at its clunkiest, the film is often surprisingly companionable.

It’s about Aloysius (Paul Campbell), an amiable nut who is a sort of mascot of a small Jamaican village. The locals tolerate him and even indulge his fancies. (It helps that he’s a great cricket player.) He sleeps under a huge spreading tree, with which he carries on conversations, and he talks to the bushes and cricket balls too. He’s like a character in a children’s fairy tale, and the director Lol Creme gives his communions with nature a joyous, cracked quality. Even though Creme, based in England, is a rock-video veteran, “The Lunatic” (rated R for sensuality) is refreshingly pokey and unslick. It seems to move with the same rhythms as the Jamaican lilt.

The film is quite pleasant as long as Aloysius is clambering around town and getting into scrapes. But when a behemoth-sized German tourist (Julie T. Wallace) collars Aloysius into becoming her lover, the film devolves into bargain-bin slapstick. Wallace is a formidable actress (she played the lead in the fine BBC mini-series “The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil”) but she throws the movie off kilter right along with Aloysius. Instead of seeing the world through his eyes, and picking up all sorts of oddments of Jamaican folklore, we’re treated to a series of clobbery confabs between Aloysius and her Valkyrean paramour. It’s as if the filmmakers didn’t have enough faith in simple, dawdling, languorous pleasures. The results aren’t fatal, just disappointing. Aloysius deserves a bit better.

‘The Lunatic’

Julie T. Wallace: Inga

Paul Campbell: Aloysius

Reggie Carter: Busha

An Island Pictures presentation of a Paul Heller/John Pringle production, released by Triton Pictures. Director Lol Creme. Producers Paul Heller and John Pringle. Executive producers Chris Blackwell and Dan Genetti. Screenplay by Anthony C. Winkler based on the novel “The Lunatic.” Cinematographer Richard Greatrex. Editor Michael Connell. Art director Giorgio Ferrari. Costumes Patricia Griffiths. Music Wally Badarou. Art director Giorgio Ferrari. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (sensuality).