NR | 1h 39m | Comedy | Feb. 9, 2024
“Marmalade” takes place in a southern, American small town, starting deceptively slow like a cicada droning in a Spanish-moss tree (it was filmed in Minnesota), featuring some hilarious prison cellmate conversations, and then shifts into high gear with a mad love affair and a masks-and-.44 Magnum bank heist, with the FBI in hot pursuit.
“Marmalade” is Australian writer-director Keir O’Donnell’s feature film debut. My advice is to wait out the slow lead-in, because the payoff is quite entertaining.
The MPDG (Manic Pixie Dream Girl)
Baron (Joe Keery of “Stranger Things”) is a thoroughly clueless, mildly depressed, but well-meaning long-haired lad with a Forrest Gump drawl, who takes care of his bedridden mother.
Enter the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. What’s that? Film critic Nathan Rabin, after seeing Kirsten Dunst in “Elizabethtown,” came up with the concept of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” as in, “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” Think character Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) in “Almost Famous.” In terms of costumes—based on characters Marmalade and Penny Lane—it would seem that the fur coats beloved of 1970’s rock stars may be ubiquitous to the MPDG. I’d have to do some actual research to confirm this hunch.
So the MPDG of this little tale arrives out of the blue in an electric blue ’67 Chevelle convertible. She’s the pink-haired titular Marmalade (Camila Morrone, “Mickey and the Bear” and a couple of other small films, but whose current claim to fame is that she’s possibly the only ex-girlfriend to ever dump Leonardo DiCaprio before he dumped her). One might call her a bit of an evil Manic Pixie Dream Girl, in that she shamelessly seduces the hapless Baron into being the meek Clyde to her vivacious Bonnie. They proceed to rehearse the six components of a bank heist, which is heralded by title cards.
Prison
Most of “Marmalade” takes place after the bank heist, which is presented as a series of flashbacks. The naive Baron’s been thrown in the slammer, where he strikes a tentative deal with cellmate Otis (Aldis Hodge—quarterback “Voodoo” in the TV series “Friday Night Lights”).
Otis cites his ability to easily escape prison, and so Baron recounts his life story, speaking mostly about the love of his life, the crazy Marmalade, and how he helped her rob a bank in order to afford more pills for his sick mother, and also have enough to start his and Marmalade’s new lives together.
And so Otis, hilariously very moved by Baron’s devotion to Marmalade, hatches a next-day plan to break both of them out of the joint. Otis is also motivated by Baron’s promise of $250,000 in cash as an incentive for Otis’s escape-and-evade services.
All Is Not Quite as It Appears
Will they, in fact, escape? Will Baron be reunited with Marmalade, who calls him “puppy?” (or is it “puppet?” I think it may have been both. Both are highly apropos). Will mama get her pills? Will there be a Keyser Söze-type reveal similar to the end of “The Usual Suspects?”
“Marmalade” is an impressive feature film debut, because while it would be easy to write it off as a lovers-turned-bank-robbers-on-the-lam story, it morphs into a very different kind of animal. We’re set up to believe that dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers good-guy Baron, in all his inept Forrest Gump-ness, has been caught up in something way too sophisticated for his small-town imagination to comprehend.
Joe Keery and Camila Morrone have fun chemistry, and Ms. Morrone, exceedingly comfortable as Marmalade, could be an instant star due to this role. Same goes for Aldis Hodge as Otis—expect to immediately see more of these two. “Marmalade” is very pleasantly, surprisingly compelling; the many plot twists make it an unexpected delight.
You can watch “Marmalade” on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Vide, and Vudu.
‘Marmalade’
Director: Keir O’Donnell
Starring: Joe Keery, Camila Morrone, Aldis Hodge
Not Rated
Running Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Release Date: Feb. 9, 2024
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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