Netflix’s Sundance hit is powered by the knockout charm of its star, Jessica Williams, while Jake Gyllenhaal heads up a philosophical Alien knockoff
For a brand promoted as the ultimate in couch-cuddling leisure, Netflix’s original films, however thoughtful and rewarding, don’t tend to be wholly entertainment-oriented or go that well with a bucket of homemade popcorn. Up on the streaming service since Friday, The Incredible Jessica James is a breezy exception: a sweet, spry, Sundance-stamped romantic comedy that rewrites no rules of the genre but gets its blithe freshness from the sparky, self-effacing star quality of one Jessica Williams.
A 27-year-old comedian and Daily Show correspondent given ample room to breathe, riff and roar by director Jim Strouse’s script, Williams bounds into the proceedings with unfiltered comic peculiarity as a New York playwright poring over the fragments of her dating life. We’re in the gangly televisual terrain of Issa Rae and Lena Dunham here, but Williams’s persona is disarming entirely on its own terms. The equally off-piste Chris O’Dowd is her unlikely love interest, and their combined skew-whiff charm makes a sunny delight of this loose, lightly plotted ramble.
Table 19 sputters to life only when we’re seated between Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson
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Source: Guardian
