Movie of the Week: The Incredible Jessica James

Alexa: The plot of “The Incredible Jessica James” is pretty formulaic for an indie rom-com. Girl is getting over a bad breakup. Girl meets boy who is also reeling from a messy divorce. Girl and boy find love while navigating some complications. Girl also finds herself in the process. But this movie has a lot going for it that elevates it beyond others in the genre, first and foremost its captivating lead. I picked this film because I loved Jessica Williams on “The Daily Show,” and I was not disappointed in her performance here. “The Incredible Jessica James” is a showcase of her talents. Her Jessica James is grounded and relatable. She can be self-centered at times but her outward confidence masks a host of inward insecurities, which takes a toll on her relationships. But ultimately, she learns from her experiences. She’s a refreshingly honest and nuanced protagonist for a rom-com, and she’s surrounded by other engaging characters. Chris O’Dowd, Lakeith Stanfield and Noel Wells all deliver excellent turns as Jessica’s love interest, ex and best friend, respectively, and Taliyah Whitaker shines in a subplot about the fragile mentor-mentee relationship between Jessica and one of her students. The movie wraps up a little too quickly and neatly, as rom-coms are often prone to do, but overall it’s an enjoyable little gem.

Joel: There’s quite honestly a lot going on in this movie. You have Jessica’s new relationship. You have her struggling with her feelings about her ex and constantly talking to her imagined version of him. You have her passionate feelings concerning theater, art, and its importance in the world as well as its struggle in the current state of our society. You have her thoughts, opinions, and styles not fitting in with her family and her struggles with that. You this whole subplot of the mentor mentee relationship she has with one of the students in her class. It’s a lot of stuff crammed into this movie especially when you consider that it’s a pretty short movie to begin with. But as much as is crammed into this movie’s quick runtime, somehow it all ends up fitting.

It doesn’t fit perfectly of course. There are a few times where it feels like we were rapidly jumping between subplots without ever giving any one individual storyline time to flesh out. But it’s not a deal breaker for the movie and as the movie progresses you start to get a feel for a through line for the entire thing. There is a point early on in the movie where Jessica goes on a date with a divorced guy (Chris O’Dowd). I’m not even sure if we learn divorced guy’s name is Boone in the scene or it he’s just known to the audiences as divorced guy until he called Jessica later in the movie. Anyway, about a minute into this scene, I realized that the rest of the movie could be these two characters talking and I would have been fine with it. These two quickly build a relationship that is just fun to watch. Everything clicks very quickly and it helps the rest of the movie fall into place. Jessica’s relationship with Boone allows her to reveal elements of her personality that allow us to contextualize other scenes in the movie. Jessica Williams does a great job as the main lead carrying this movie, and the two of them together are the highlight of the movie every time they are on screen with one another.

Chris: An alternate title for this movie could be “Humans are weird, man” because for all of Jessica’s dominant qualities, she has contradicting insecurities. It’s weird, it’s almost as if it’s a rom-com with the main character written like an actual human being. My main complaint on this movie is that as messy as the plot is, it wraps up too perfectly and without much of an explanation. Boone hooks up with his ex wife and Jessica catches him, next time we see him, she asks to meet him and they’re cordial and ready to be in a relationship together. However, we don’t really see much of a transition to that point. Boone said that he’s ready to move on because he only wants to be with Jessica but all we were shown to prove that was him going through her Instagram. And Jessica seemed so eager to go along with him but we didn’t really see any sort of journey of her reaching that decision. It’s a modern take on the typical romantic comedy that’s fun but it runs out of steam in the final 15 minutes.

Jason: I can’t really say too much about this movie because I didn’t feel there was a whole lot there to talk about. It’s a modern romantic comedy about a modern type of woman. She is an arrogant and pretentious Millennial but also totally insecure. She hates the patriarchy but is being torn apart by a break up and agrees to go on a blind date. I just didn’t get behind her character. And if you can’t get behind the main character of a movie who is in literally every single scene, then the movie just drags on. They totally lost me when they made their exs’ Instagram accounts a part of the plot. And I never got back on track. It would have made a more interesting story if Jessica had been so badly burned in her relationship, went on dates with a few guys but never really made anything of it, and then ended the story by finding strength and self-reliance in herself and NOT being in a relationship. That would have made her feel like a more real character rather than just being quirky for the sake of being quirky. As it is, it felt just so meh.