Tweet
At the Cinemark Watchung Cinemas, Watchung, New Jersey
*****
In 1998, the chimpanzee star of a television situation comedy suddenly goes berserk during the filming of a scene, and in the space of a few minutes slaughters his cast mates before being shot by police. Twenty-five years later, a survivor of the incident is running a wild-west amusement park next door to a ranch where a brother and sister train horses for motion picture work. Lately, though, they've become obsessed with capturing video footage of a flying saucer that emerges from a cloud over the ranch at the same time every night . . . except it may not actually be a flying saucer.
Nope is a tedious movie filled with a lot of questionable symbolism and is nowhere near as intriguing as its trailers made it seem. It appears on some level to be a commentary about the mistreatment of animals (one of the aforementioned symbols: early on a horse injured when a key falls from the UFO and hits it in the flank. Duh.) and on another level simply a Sodom and Gomorrah story. The photography is beautiful though (some or all of it was shot 65mm) and the sound design is top-notch. The performers all all OK, but the lead actor underplays his part to a frustrating extent, the lead actress makes up for this by being so manic as to be unintelligible. There are some pretty good thrills early on, but when the true nature of the mysterious object was revealed the audience I saw it with got very quiet.
If you are interested in director Jordan Peele and enjoyed his previous films, this may be worth a look, but a great science fiction movie this is not.
*****
In 1998, the chimpanzee star of a television situation comedy suddenly goes berserk during the filming of a scene, and in the space of a few minutes slaughters his cast mates before being shot by police. Twenty-five years later, a survivor of the incident is running a wild-west amusement park next door to a ranch where a brother and sister train horses for motion picture work. Lately, though, they've become obsessed with capturing video footage of a flying saucer that emerges from a cloud over the ranch at the same time every night . . . except it may not actually be a flying saucer.
Nope is a tedious movie filled with a lot of questionable symbolism and is nowhere near as intriguing as its trailers made it seem. It appears on some level to be a commentary about the mistreatment of animals (one of the aforementioned symbols: early on a horse injured when a key falls from the UFO and hits it in the flank. Duh.) and on another level simply a Sodom and Gomorrah story. The photography is beautiful though (some or all of it was shot 65mm) and the sound design is top-notch. The performers all all OK, but the lead actor underplays his part to a frustrating extent, the lead actress makes up for this by being so manic as to be unintelligible. There are some pretty good thrills early on, but when the true nature of the mysterious object was revealed the audience I saw it with got very quiet.
If you are interested in director Jordan Peele and enjoyed his previous films, this may be worth a look, but a great science fiction movie this is not.
Comment