Nuked Review: T-H-C Ya Later
Stoners contemplating the apocalypse are somehow even more annoying in this movie
If you want all the annoyance of vapid stoner conversation without any of the pleasures of a secondhand high, Nuked might be your movie. As potential apocalypse flicks go, it gets at least one aspect right, by making all of its characters so unappealing that you're rooting for them to die horribly in fire and radiation long before any end-of-the-world plot points materialize. Whether or not the end is really nigh – the movie keeps it a mystery for quite a while – you're not going to come out of this one devastated by man's inhumanity to man. Rather, you'll be glad the cast finally shut up.
With, perhaps, one exception: Natasha Leggero is the only one who seems to have understood the assignment. As the chef-for-hire catering the pompous, shared 40th birthday party of married couple Jack and Gill (HAW HAW HAW, as Chick tract characters like to react), who has prepared a multi-course menu entirely based around marijuana, she demonstrates actual comic timing and a commitment to character above and beyond “pretentious douche,” which appears to be the single acting choice everyone else has made.
The party is limited to old friends and significant others, with the catch being that it's a phone-free party, a stipulation in place because Gill (Anna Camp) is an insufferably online obsessed podcaster and influencer who has to turn everything into a selfie. Jack (Justin Bartha) would rather have kids and be a family guy, but has noticed Gill is more interested in podcasting about having babies than actually making one. Clearly her podcast is lucrative enough to afford them the use of a large mansion for the weekend.
Turning up for the wedding are new parents Sam (George Young) and Penelope (Lucy Punch), whose defining characteristic is being English, which is presumed to mean annoying; as-yet-unmarried gay couple Damian (Stephen Guarino) and Ishaan (Maulik Pancholy), who are defined by their gayness, which is presumed to mean polyamorous; rock star Logan (Ignacio Serricchio) whose gray facial stubble is shorthand for drunk; and Mo (Tawny Newsome), who, perhaps because of her Star Trek character, is short-handed as the one with military connections but not all the knowledge. Also she has some feelings for Logan, because only Natasha Leggero was lucky enough to get a character not defined by relationship status.
If you watch this movie, as I did, mainly to see Newsome and because of Star Trek: Lower Decks, you might find yourself wondering either what favors she owes others, or why Star Trek actors so often have trouble finding other good parts thereafter. As the most attractive person onscreen, she gets a (brief, fully clothed) sex scene, but that's hardly a movie-saver. Meanwhile, her ST:LD castmate Jack Quaid is in everything that comes out, usually finding projects that are actually funny.
About 35 minutes into the movie, we get to the point. Annoying Penelope sneaks upstairs to find her phone so she can harass her babysitter even further, only to see an emergency text alert that a ballistic missile is inbound for California and everyone should take shelter immediately. She brings back everyone's phones so they all can see it, and when Mo checks in on her defense-industry friends, they say it's not a drill, but they don't have any more info to share. Everyone promptly runs down to the basement, half-stoned from the meal, and proceeds to air their relationship issues in what might be their last moments on earth.
Prior to the crisis point, director Deena Kashper (nee Adar) manages to convey at least a touch of cinematic contact high during the dinner, as the obnoxiously rich and insecure principals finally lighten up and get a little stupid. Once the buzz is shifted by circumstances to paranoia, they're no fun again. At least when college students get high, they talk about stuff like, “What if the color I call blue is what you see as red, but you've called it blue all your life?” Apparently once people turn 40, they just whine about marriage and kids, once blazed. I get it – if they're part of your life, you do need an outlet to complain. But that doesn't mean the rest of us find it entertaining enough to watch a movie about.
There's an old Lenny Henry comedy sketch from the '80s that I cannot find online, as UK TV watchers of that decade were clearly not as obsessive with their VCRs. But the gist of it, inspired by a similar scene in the radio play version of Raymond Briggs' When the Wind Blows, is that couple hears on the radio that a nuclear attack is coming, and the station is now going to switch to music instead. As the music plays, the couple tearfully confess affairs to one another, noting it doesn't matter now because they're going to die. At that point, the radio announcer cuts in and says, “We hope you've enjoyed the first episode of the new audio play, When the Bomb Drops.” The couple immediately become furious with another and yell that they're sluts. In maybe four minutes, that got all the humor out of the premise that Nuked manages to spread across 86 of them.
Nuked doesn't have quite the same twist. But back in 2012, Todd Berger's It's a Disaster got better, darker laughs from a biological apocalypse movie with similarly shallow characters in a much more certain apocalypse. Kashper's script, cowritten with husband Danny, simply isn't funny enough as a weed movie nor cynical enough a nuclear war movie to work on either level, let alone both. It's apparently based on a party the director actually went to, so I can quietly feel sorry for that experience even as I don't care for her reenactment of it. Only a professional stand-up like Leggero can do much with the lines, adding crucial comedic timing – her own selfies are scattered throughout the end credits, as if to remind you that there was at least one funny thing in the film that just ended.
If you really want to contemplate the end of the world while on pot, fire up your own bong and turn to the cable news channel of your choice for about an hour and a half. If you want to feel better, go see Superman again this weekend instead.
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Nuked premieres in theaters July 11th. All stills courtesy of Rockhill Studios.