Review: Guava Island Is a Pretty Good Childish Gambino Music Video and a Pretty Bad Movie
As Donald Glover was headlining Coachella as Childish Gambino this weekend, he was also simultaneously launching another festival: In the new movie Guava Island, which premiered on the Coachella grounds Thursday night before streaming on Amazon Prime following the Childish Gambino set Friday night, Glover plays Deni Maroon, an idealist musician trying to bring a day of festivity to his otherwise overworked island community. Produced by much of the creative team behind Glover’s hit series “Atlanta,” including director Hiro Murai and screenwriter Stephen Glover (Donald’s brother), the 55-minute-long feature isn’t really a “tropical thriller,” as it’s described in official promotional language. It’s really more of a very long commercial for Childish Gambino songs dressed up as a love story centered around a labor conflict in a tainted wonderland. While gorgeous to look at, the film gets too bogged down in romantic, albeit somewhat witless, ideas about overcoming those who’d pave paradise to put up a parking lot.
Through narration (and animation), Kofi (Rihanna) opens the film by recounting a story her mother told her every night at bedtime: a long time ago, the gods created Guava, a paradise that bore rare silks produced by rare creatures called clayworms. Inevitably, though, capitalism invaded: The Red family took control of Guava’s silk industry and became the nation’s plutocrats. As the ruling class, they replaced this Shangri-La with enterprise, spreading greed among the people and tarnishing much of the island’s natural beauty. (The vibrant and colorful opening animated sequence, which, as it turns out, establishes nearly all of the plot, is a highlight of the film.)
Guava has since become home to a repressed people of a West Indian-like islet culture where they speak both English and Spanish. (The movie was shot in Cuba.) Deni longs to write a song that unites them and reminds everyone of the magic Guava once had, the same magic Kofi’s mother told stories of, even if for only one day.
Deni works at Red’s Cargo, the export arm of the silk operation, headed by Red Cargo (Nonso Anozie) and also hosts a popular local radio broadcast. The musician plans to throw a festival for the Guavan working class, which endures a grueling seven-day work week in accordance with the Red family’s demands for producing silk. The festival threatens to upset the lopsided work-life balance the family has established.
Music follows Deni wherever he goes—it’s literally playing every time he’s on screen. He is the town’s Music Man, always carrying his guitar like an unnecessary reminder. All he does in the film is perform, and set up performances. The movie goes to great lengths trying to prove that the music Deni makes is energizing a country in stasis; in one montage, his radio broadcast is shown being dispersed like mana amongst a starving populace.
Despite his inconsistent accent, Glover can be inviting as Deni, full of life and full of purpose. He represents the last bastion of Guavan magic that hasn’t been commodified by the Red family. “We live in paradise but none of us have the time or the means to actually live here,” he tells a coworker. But it’s unclear how his planned festival will remedy this injustice in the long run. Instead of a festival, why doesn’t he organize a strike?
When one cargo worker explains his plan to save enough to bribe his way to America, Deni scoffs. He knows America to be no less money-grubbing than Guava, no less devoid of opportunity. “America is a concept,” he pontificates. “Anywhere where in order to get rich you have to make someone else richer is America.” Cue a rendition of “This Is America” performed as a musical number with the cargo contraptions as instruments and workers as back-up dancers. Unlike the other performances in the movie, it’s the only one that feels totally surreal. Murai, who also directed the whirlwind violence of the “This is America” video, loosely transposes its choreography to address a new context: wherever you go, even in the Land of the Free, there is no escape from the tyranny of evil men. Better to stay and fight for home. Better the enemy you know.
These are the core ideals of Guava Island: stand up to local tyrants for the sake of a better community and find the fuel to persevere through music. The message is a noble one, if not a bit idealist, but Glover and Murai and their team have banked too heavily on aesthetics and star power to be bogged down by empty dialogue and thin plotting.
Rihanna, who was born and raised in Barbados, is in her element as a woman from a small island with big dreams, and she plays Kofi as cynical and knowing. But she doesn’t get to exist beyond being Deni’s muse. She is a supposed pragmatist who doesn’t see their home through the same rose-colored glasses, offsetting Deni’s free-spirited idealism, but because the universe of Guava Island revolves around him, she can’t help but be awed by his optimism. Her drives get lost in his, until he becomes her only motivation. As if to add insult to injury, Rihanna never performs a song, despite being the superior artist. Watching her carefully maneuver within Glover’s orbit here, staying a chronically underused talent as he erects a monument to himself, can be maddening.
Many of the best episodes of “Atlanta” were written by Stephen Glover and directed by Hiro Murai, but Guava Island doesn’t share that same careful sketch work. The scenes they create together on the show are often masterful in their intimate portrayals of black humanity, balancing the humor and fucked-up-ness of persisting as struggling artists in slice of life vignettes. Guava Island misses the mark while seeking a similar destination. It almost never gives its capable cast anything to actually do. There aren’t nearly enough meaningful characters to purposefully populate an island this poorly conceived.
As a vehicle for Childish Gambino songs, Guava Island makes for a pretty good music video. As a movie, Guava Island is little more than coherent. The creative team behind the film want to imagine that a paradise lost can be found again in song. At its best, it’s hard to take seriously. At its worst, it’s utterly self-indulgent.
