Nope Review: Jordan Peele and Daniel Kaluuya Channel Steven Spielberg

For a while, Nope is fun – if a bit leisurely — as the viewer tries to put the puzzle pieces together. The movie opens with a strikingly eerie scene of a blood-covered chimpanzee wandering around what looks like the set of a TV sitcom, with bodies on the floor nearby. The enigmatic scene is connected later to a character named Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a child star turned entrepreneur who runs Jupiter’s Claim, a modest Western-themed amusement park near the Haywards’ ranch.

The whitewashed images of the Old West presented by Jupe provide a contrast to the secret history of Hollywood represented by the Haywoods, most significantly by the fact that they claim their great-great-grandfather played a key role in the development of cinema itself. These ideas and the characters who embody them – the forgotten child star trying to make a buck, the craftspeople of color who have delivered specific services behind the scenes for decades and are now trying to stay relevant – make Nope as fresh at the outset as Peele’s earlier efforts.

But balancing these ideas with the main sci-fi story is where Nope falls out of the saddle. As several online commentators have noted, the initial stretch of the film seems in part to be channeling Steven Spielberg circa Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but it then changes into another Spielberg film down the homestretch. The problem is that it fails to make that transition successfully, leaving a lot of squandered ideas, plot holes, and logical gaps in its wake. Nope wants to be a big movie and even comments on the very concept of big movies, but never successfully unites and develops its themes.

On the other hand, for a movie at least partially about the people we don’t often recognize for their contributions to filmmaking, the craftspeople below the line really shine on this picture. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema – who’s worked with Christopher Nolan on his last few films – collaborates with Peele here for the latter’s most visually breathtaking film yet (it’s shot on 65mm and with IMAX cameras, making this a true big-screen experience).

The vast California skies, the implacable mountains surrounding the Haywood ranch, and the clouds hovering above them all provide both a sense of space and entrapment, while the scenes in which the invader attacks – including one grisly, truly terrifying showstopper in the middle of the film – are as visceral and immersive as possible. Also immersive is Michael Abels’ score, which combines modern electronics with the more traditional orchestral strains of the kind of blockbuster Peele is channeling.

The performances are mixed. Kaluuya has a number of great moments, his disappointment, grief, and world-weariness giving way to moments of stark fear and courage, but there are also times when he seems strangely detached, as if he’s trying to work out the story as he goes. Palmer is all movement and electricity as Emerald, who craves the Hollywood spotlight as much as her brother shies away from it, and the two share an easy chemistry as siblings.

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