Get Duked(Amazon Prime Video)
Starring Viraj Juneja as DJ Beatroot,Lewis Gribben as Duncan MacDonald,Samuel Bottomley as Ian,Rian Gordon as Dean Gibson
Directed by Ninian Doff
Rating: * ½
It is very difficult to appreciate a film that tries so hard to be funny and cocky, and is neither. Get Duked is one of those funny-face freak show where everyone must be laughing their heads off while shooting.
I saw nothing funny in the fatuous fable of four ethnically diverse boy- pals on a trekking expedition through the Scottish countryside that turns unexpectedly dangerous when a couple of kinky purists start firing at them. You see, these are the neo-racists in Britain glibly replacing the Nazis of yore.
And boy, what a bore! I understand the director’s dexterous gravity-defying game of switching horror to comedy and then again from comedy to horror. But the writing, to use a mixed metaphor, is clearly hazy. There are points in the perverse pilgrimage where I thought the proceedings would suddenly perk up. But no such luck.
Dull as ditchwater Get Duked gets you all puked. It is ham-fisted and blissfully disrespectful of the British institutions that foster class distinction and race supremacy. The four young actors playing the lead, one of them of Indian origin, are filled with bounce and brio expressing nothing that we would like to remember even moments after the corny comedy is snuffed out.
Midway, a bunch of cops , hitherto focusing on a rice thief,shift attention to the alleged terrorist who is firing randomly at trekkers in the highland. It all adds up to a super-dumb film with no head or tale. Just funny, because the director says so. The Scottish accent is so thick the actors need subtitles. It is the only way the goings-on may make some sense.
