Writer-director Ninian Doff\u2019s first feature is a comic adventure that recalls Joe Cornish\u2019s Attack the Block<\/em>, if Cornish had plunked his young heroes in the Scottish highlands and stripped the whole thing of social commentary. As silly as the movie is, it isn\u2019t without some earnest charm. If you come in looking for a diverting good time, you may find yourself won over by the credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Duncan (Lewis Gribben), Dean (Rian Gordon) and DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) are teenage delinquents whose teacher, Mr. Carlyle (Jonathan Aris), gives them an ultimatum: they must successfully complete an outdoor enrichment course called The Duke of Edinburgh Challenge, or be expelled from school. Mr. Carlyle drops the boys off in the highlands along with Ian (Samuel Bottomley), a sheltered kid who loves the outdoors and volunteered for the experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the troublemaking quartet journey toward their rendezvous point, they encounter a variety of characters, including Cosmo\u2019s hallucinogen-loving farmer and a pair of homicidal toffs (Eddie Izzard and Georgie Glen) who turn the trip into a \u201cmost dangerous game\u201d scenario. The boys are also pursued by two small-town cops (Kate Dickie and Kevin Guthrie) who are convinced these pubescent boneheads are some kind of terrorist group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In its first third, Get Duked!<\/em> feels as goofy as its main characters. The kids lumber around the countryside and make dumb decisions you can see coming a mile off. These sophomoric setpieces get some flash and attitude from Doff\u2019s music video proclivities and a soundtrack that makes strategic use of Run the Jewels\u2019 \u201cLegend Has It\u201d (Doff has realized, as many filmmakers have, that adding RTJ to your film automatically elevates it by 10 percentage points).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The movie also gets a boost from its cast, full of game performers bringing their best to material they\u2019re undeniably overqualified for. Dickie is deadpan fun as a crusading cop; she\u2019s outdone only by Alice Lowe, in a great cameo as Dickie\u2019s boss. Izzard is excellently cast as an evil, rich murderer, and British TV regular Aris gets some good room to stretch as Mr. Carlyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the plot threads Doff sets up start to strengthen, Get Duked!<\/em> becomes genuinely enjoyable and surprisingly sweet. The farmer and his clan take DJ Beatroot under their wing, resulting in a wild musical sequence that employs trippy visual effects and produces a legitimate banger of a track. While not everything else lives up to the promise of this section, that moment, and the payoffs that follow, do a lot to win over skeptical viewers (including this one).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Get Duked!<\/em> may seem like a chronic underachiever of a movie, but there\u2019s some good work here that\u2019s worth giving credit to. It\u2019s certainly not the smartest film you\u2019ll see all year, but it\u2019s still enjoyable, and displays some decent writing and directing skill on Doff\u2019s part. If you\u2019re looking for something easy to enjoy after a long day, you could do a lot worse. The movie sets its sights on a fairly low bar for enjoyment, and crosses that bar with ease. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/duked2-1024x683.jpg\")
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