Cinema: Nope is a nope in our dismal nose-diving summer of cinema

Daniel Kaluuya as OJ in Nope PIC: Universal

Rarely can a film have so comprehensively lived up to its name. Nope is a big fat bloated nope – yet another low point in a dismally disappointing summer of cinema so far.

The latest Jurassic Park instalment was pretty good; The Railway Children Return was lovely; but we’ve had some real stinkers in between times, not least last week’s Bullet Train.

Sadly, Nope sets the bar even lower, an overblown couple of hours to baffling pretension which actually makes Bullet Train seem vaguely entertaining in retrospect.

When the conclusion to a film depends on a giant inflatable and seemingly indigestible floating cowboy, you know the movie’s in deep, deep trouble. But in a bizarre little subplot, Nope does at least manage to boast the weirdest, strangest back story ever seen.

The main movie focuses on horse wrangler OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) who’ve got a very big problem. They are utterly in the middle of nowhere which is presumably why an unexplained flesh-eating space craft/space monster has picked them out as a handy source of snacks.

The UFO killed their dad a few months before while he was sitting on his horse minding his own business. For some reason the horse ended up with a key embedded in its rump – a narrow escape compared to the grisly end that Otis Sr (Keith David) came to.

Not surprisingly, OJ and Emerald seek out some help in in the shape of Angel (Brandon Perea), a techie guy who doesn’t exactly achieve terribly much but at least gives them all the feeling that they are doing something. The oddest thing, however, is what’s happening nearby where Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) is running a fairly-ghastly Wild West theme park – the source, when we finally need it, of the over-sized air-filled cowboy.

The fascination with Ricky, though, is what happened to him back in the 1990s when he was a child star on a fairly trashy-looking TV show which had the misfortune to cast a chimpanzee as one of its attractions.

This wasn’t a PG Tips type chimp though. This one was a time bomb ticking away until the moment it lost the plot entirely and ripped to pieces the actors playing the family, all in front of a live audience.

Young Ricky manages to scarper under a table where he watches it all… and then the chimp notices him… Well, better not give too much away.

But as back stories go, we really are in bonkers territory.

Whether it’s got anything to do with the human-eating UFO that hovers over his near-neighbour’s house 20 years later, only film-maker Jordan Peele could possibly tell us… though it feels likely he hasn’t a clue either.

Maybe if giant blow-up cowboys, homicidal chimps and flesh-chomping aliens are your thing, you will consider you’ve hit the jackpot with Nope.

Otherwise, you’ll consider it the biggest cinematic no-no of a consistently ropey summer – and a desperately disappointing third instalment in the downward spiralling collaboration of Peele and Kaluuya.

First we had the excellent Get Out, then the haunting Us. With Nope, you just wish the chimp had eaten the script.