Smile Orange

Where Trevor Rhone's script for The Harder They Come relocated Hollywood B movie conventions in a specifically Jamaican context, his first film as director does much the same with the stock material of British comedy. From this he's crafted a genuinely hilarious politicised farce; a satire on tourism that centres on hotel waiter Ringo Smith's efforts to exploit the exploiters. One long, two-handed scene exemplifies the balance Rhone achieves, when Ringo (Bradshaw) takes a raw busboy in hand, informs him that 'any black man that can't play a part's gonna starve to death', and proceeds first to teach him waiting etiquette, then how to screw white tourists, literally and figuratively. The Mocho Beach Hotel, main locale of this anarchic entertainment, has inevitably been characterised as a Jamaican Fawlty Towers, but it's hard to imagine even Basil rigging a crab race! Black joy indeed, from which a few technical rough ends detract nothing.