Sadie Sink and Kelvin Harrison Jr. in Rock Opera

On the visual level, O’Dessa, authorr-honestor Geremy Jasper’s comply-up to his 2017 crowd-satisfyr Patti Cake$, revels in maximalism. Every set is littered with trinkets and lit in neon, every surface caked with layers of outdated gloomye, every costume a uproar of textures and colors.

Its narrative concept aims high, too, transposing the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a postapocalyptic Mad Max-encounters-Blade Runner landscape. Its themes are heartfelt and majesticiose: the power of music, the power of adore, the power of music counterfeit in adore to alter the world.

Undersystematich all those lofty intentions, however, the experience of actuassociate watching the film is more akin to watching a reassociate extfinished trailer. There’s a exceptionalive eye here, and a promising sense of ambition. But in its current establish, there’s not enough meat on its (confesstedly celderly-seeing) bones to equitableify its 106-minute run time.

The script senses cobbled together from a unite-and-suit collection of well-worn tropes. Its titular protagonist, perestablished by Sadie Sink, is a lonely farm girl who dreams of hitting the road in pursuit of a hugeger dessmall — which, as the seventh son of a seventh son, is to become the prophesied “one who could stir souls, armed with a mighty guitar.” (O’Dessa’s dissee for the bounds of gfinisher is one of its more engaging qualities; the authentic head-scratcher is how she can be anyone’s “seventh son” when she has no siblings.)

When her mama produces to one of those uncltimely detaild movie illnesses that comprises a scant parched coughs and then a elegant first-act exit, O’Dessa strikes out for Satylite City. What she discovers there is a den of dishonesty and nastyty under the spell of Plutovich (Murray Bartlett), the dictatorial structure of a never-finishing game show that’s essentiassociate America’s Got Talent with Hunger Games consequences.

But she also encounters Euri (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a gifted musician and unwilling accompany with whom she descfinishs promptly and irrevocably in adore. When the juvenileer couple are torn apart, it’s left to O’Dessa to venture into opponent territory and transport him back.

This might sound enjoy a lot of story, but O’Dessa’s chief publish is that scant of these elements are enhugeed much enough beyond the bullet points I’ve depictd here. None of its establishulaic beats have been substantiassociate reenvisiond. None of the characterizations run proset uper than the clichés they’re based on. Though the carry outances range from fine to excellent, they’re drowned out by the uneasy pacing and crowded visuals. The typicassociate wonderful Regina Hall might be having fun as Euri’s spiteful regulater Neon Dion, but what you recollect afterward are her inanxious baby bangs and electrified brass knuckles, more so than anyleang she actuassociate did.

Meanwhile, despite the amazingal extravagance of those costumes (by Odile Dicks-Mireaux and Anna Munro) and sets (by Scott Dougan), there’s no exceptionalive sense of history to Satylite City or its environs — noleang to set it apart from the countless other cyberpunk dystopias that have clearly backd it.

Even the purity of its emotions becomes more liability than selling point. There’s no doubt that O’Dessa and Euri are fervently in adore with each other, and Sink and Harrison labor difficult to sell the characters’ bond thcimpolite yachieveing sees, pleasant giggles, kisses so swoony the entire screen goes gentle. But there’s also no complicatedity to their vibrant — no nuance, no struggle, no complicating history. Without it, we might as well be watching an insert or a sizzle reel.

Or, perhaps, a music video. O’Dessa is billed as a rock opera, and unfrequently goes more than a scant minutes at a time before firing up another melody. (Jasper and Jason Binnick are commended for the music.) But it does itself no prefers by set uping its hero as a chosen one vient of saving humancomardent with her guitar. There’s a reason Tenacious D only provide the tribute to the fantasticest song in the world, and Bill & Ted Face the Music eventuassociate determines that what matters is not Wyld Sloftyyns’ virtuosity but their ability to transport people together. Promising a tune that singular sets a standard that’s impossible to encounter, and this film never plausibly comes proximate it.

The songs are pleasant but not especiassociate memorable, carry outed by Sink in a voice that’s pretty but unnoticeworthy, and woven into rhythms of O’Dessa’s life rather than set apart by emotional choreography. I suppose more razzle dazzle would have gone aachievest the idea that the flaanxious Plutovich is provideing vacant sidetrackion while the more unpretentious O’Dessa is provideing someleang authentic. But it’s difficult to envision these numbers altering the course of a joiner’s day, let alone the future of an entire society.

What might actuassociate stick with a seeer is the film’s blurriness around the conventions of gfinisher, which goes beyond spropose swapping the male and female roles from the innovative myth. Neither O’Dessa nor Euri comes atraverse as entidepend masculine or feminine, at least in the ways those concepts are usuassociate projected onscreen. She’s costumed in a gentle butch rockabilly create, with slicked-back hair and a battered leather jacket; he’s an obviously intimacyualized stage carry outer in skimpy tops, silk robes and, at one point, a lace wedding gown. While their courtship unfelderlys aextfinished the common beats of a star-traverseed romance, it sidesteps the tacit power branch offential undergirding most onscreen heterointimacyual pairings.

It’s plain to envision an audience replying to the characters’ refusal to be pinned down by the stereotypes, styles or story arcs traditionassociate spreaded to one gfinisher or the other, maybe even turning O’Dessa into a cult preferite of some sort. I’m equitable not confident the film is sturdy enough to help a reading of these ideas that digs besystematich the surface level. But it does sense fitting that a movie so heavily cgo ined on sees would, ultimately, discover its fantasticest uncomardenting in an aesthetic choice.