POINTS: 6
British actor-turned-writer/director Craig Roberts’s Just Jim is a promising debut film that ,though it doesn’t bring that much new to the scenario it covers, is shot with enormous confidence and hits quite a few right buttons — the eloquent, bleak cinematography is particularly appealing. Plus it features credible performances from a finely calibrated cast, starting Craig Roberts himself — playing the title character — and Emile Hirsch as his new friend.
Jim is a 17-year-old friendless awkward teenager deemed as a loser by all his classmates. No matter how hard he tries — and he does try hard — he can’t fit in with the cool kids, who constantly bully him. That is until he meets the slightly mysterious American Dean (Emile Hirsch) who arrives in Jim’s Welsh village and becomes his neighbour. Dean, who’s reminiscent of James Dean, promises Jim he’ll change him. He’ll make him cool and popular, especially with the girls. Thing is that as the friendship evolves, Jim will see that there’s a sinister side to Dean as well.
If you’ve seen Roberts in the pleasant Submarine (2010), you are already familiar with his style of awkwardness. Same thing in Just Jim: contagious quirkiness, dead pan humour, restrained emotions or no emotions at all, almost no body language, and a depressive tint permeating his everyday moods. Jim’s pretty much an island unto himself. In contrast, his classmates are extroverted and aggressive, loud and wicked, whereas his parents are somewhat outgoing, kind of dumb, and totally unaware of his sons’ needs and wants.
As a coming of age story, Just Jim is pretty convincing by all accounts. Mostly because it functions on a safe and sound blueprint: the new, cool foreign guy comes into town to help the repressed teen free himself and find his true self. Only this time the uplifting story takes a slightly dark turn and does not become a Hollywood story about changing into a better version of you to fit in. Yet this is also formulaic, it’s been done before many times.
Since the humour and the acting do the required tricks most of the times, you might not worry too much about seeing stuff that rings too many bells. Some scenes are better than others — the party Jim throws, the underwater sequences, the ghostly movie theatre — and yet it’s hard to find more than a couple that are genuinely surprising. Sometimes it’s too obvious you are seeing a series of interconnected gags that lack a stronger structure.
Then again, Just Jim is skillfully directed in its own terms and carried along with enough energy to be moderately attractive to a certain point. In the future, with a more personal and more insightful script, Roberts is very likely to make a challenging film that dares to explore new roads.
production notes
Just Jim (UK, 2015). Written and directed by Craig Roberts. With Craig Roberts, Emile Hirsch, Ryan Owen, Charlotte Randall, Nia Roberts, Aneirin Hughes. Director of photography: Richard Stoddard. Production designer: Arwel Jones. Costume designer: Sian Jenkins. Editor: Stephen Haren. Music: Michael Price. Production company: Vox Pictures.
Running time: 83 minutes.
