When I asked younger cousins if they knew who Bob Marley was, their response was “the Jamaican weed guy my friends all have a poster of.” At the very least, I hope One Love shows the kids that Nestor “Bob” Marley was more than just a poster. He was an amazing man, who wrote incredible songs with wonderful messages in the face of real fear and pressure. And if the movie was more interested in telling a story instead of creating a visual greatest hits album, others might be more inspired to hear Bob’s non-Exodus music after this doc.
The movie revolves around Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and the Wailers creating their most famous album, Exodus. Jamaica at this time is in political upheaval, as rival political parties have split the country in half and caused all sorts of political violence, including attempts on Bob and his wife Rita’s (Lashana Lynch) lives. Scared for his family and moved to do something, Bob sends his family to the States and goes to London with the Wailers. There, he and producer Chris Blackwell (James Norton) get working on arguably his best album, in time hopefully for the next Jamaican election where he can bring the message of love to the angry people of Kingston…and in time before some health related complications in his own life.
One Love is basically the movie version of that college dorm poster. The movie is for the extremely novice Bob Marley fan or someone who heard about him during the latest smoke sesh. Every 10 minutes or so, we hear some version of one of the famous songs, not just the Exodus ones, that Marley would become famous for. There’s a few inspired moments here and there, like watching a very Caucasian producer try to understand Exodus’s album art, or watching Lashana Lynch will the Bob/Rita relationship into something more interesting than just “the nagging wife.” Unfortunately, for a performer as electric as Marley could be, the movie has long inert sections content to sell what they assume to be a drugged up audience what they want to see. Side note: I probably shouldn’t have been stone sober when I watched One Love.
Which brings us to Bob Marley. Not Kingsley Ben-Adir, who takes the role very seriously and completely transforms into the Rastafari Reggae legend. No, it’s the way the screenplay writes the character. The movie never fully commits to letting us inside Marley’s brain and heart. In the first 10 minutes Bob almost gets assassinated, but we never see him grapple and struggle with loving amidst such reckless hate. This starts a trend of “thing happens, song needs to be written” bogging the Bob Marley into plot instead of anything resembling a real life human being. The closes he gets is with Rita, but even that is basically a cliffs notes relationship elevated by Ben-Adir and Lynch. By the end, I was jammin’, but I don’t feel I got any closer to understanding who Bob Marley was or what makes him tick.
But who cares when Bob & the Wailers are telling me one love, one heart, let’s get together and fell alright. And that’s basically how One Love made me feel. I feel…alright about what I saw. But I feel better than alright about Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch, who are ready for an exodus into the big time ASAP.