Picture this: it’s your twenty-first birthday. For twenty-one long years you’ve been good – you’ve never had so much as a drop of alcohol. You pick up your best friend in the new car you bought to commemorate this new chapter in your life, and the two of you head to a bar. You toss back a few drinks, share some laughs, and have a great time. Then you and your best friend get back into the car. You realize that you’re a little tipsy but you don’t think you’re too drunk to drive. On the way home, you swerve a little bit, but since the roads are empty you don’t pay any heed. As you turn onto your street, a woman and a dog dart into the road. You try to avoid them but end up hitting them both and crashing your car, sending your best friend flying through the windshield. You are unharmed, but as you crawl out of the wreckage you see that the woman and the dog are both dead… and that the woman was your girlfriend and the dog was your dog. There’s nothing more you can do for them, so you rush to your best friend’s side. He’s mortally injured and he asks you to come closer. You take him in your arms and his blood flows all over you. In his final breath he tells you that he has AIDS and now you do too. Despite all this, you have nothing to complain about because you fucking haven’t seen “Nukie.” Watching this movie was the most painful experience of my life. I should mention right up front that this monstrosity has a PG rating which only serves to prove that it is a deliberate attack on our children and their precious brains. I’d say that I hate director Sias Odendal with all my might, but the blame really falls on the shoulders of screenwriter Benjamin Taylor. Well, except that the script was based on an original story by director Sias Odendal, so it actually is his fault after all. That’s just as well because I was going to blame him anyway.

The horror begins with a couple dumb click-n’-drag lens flares moving awkwardly in front of a outer space-themed clipart. It is the most visually appealing moment in the entire movie. I say “visually” because you still have to endure the voices of Nukie and Miko, two alien brothers who are traveling as balls of light. The voice acting is one of this movie’s worst aspects, in that it not only made my ears bleed but it actually caused the rivulets of my blood to sprout ears and then made those ears bleed. Nukie and Miko have identical voices and they both sound like a retarded British orphan shouting into a tin can. As they approach Earth, Nukie is frightened because of “the wind and water.” Miko, however, is having a great time. They both get sucked in by the Earth’s gravitational pull and crash. Not so fun now, is it, Miko, you little shit? We cut to the “Space Foundation,” which we know is the Space Foundation because whenever there is a cut to it we get to see the exact same shot of a some building while a narrator explains that nothing of any importance is happening. The narrator has a great speaking voice – a lot like Leonard Nimoy if someone punched him in the throat for an hour or four. Inside, two technicians, played by actors who didn’t quite make the cut at the “Mr. Ice Cream Man” auditions, make incredibly vapid comments about two UFOs on their radar screens. At this point I’d like to take a moment to explain the computer setup over at the Space Foundation (note that I didn’t say “NASA.” Sure, they may use equipment, vehicles, and uniforms with the NASA logo on them, but this is a different organization altogether). The control center is a bunch of monitors that are programmed for one of two functions:

1) Flash totally useless information and random phrases that no government organization would ever need their computers to display,

2) Flash lights constantly until everyone in the audience has seizures and swallows their tongues, so they can’t tell anyone else how awful this movie is.

All of this is regulated by the Electronic Digital Data Intelligence, EDDI (get it? It’s like the name! How delightfully plagiarized). Like all things that shouldn’t in this movie, EDDI speaks fairly regularly. Its voice is much like the narrator only with a metallic effect added. Oh wait, he sounds EXACTLY like the narrator with a metallic effect added! The brilliant technicians deduce that the first ball of light, Miko, is going to land somewhere over Miami or possibly California. Part of the difficulty they have telling the difference may stem from the fact that the light ball, which appears to be about two feet in diameter, appears on their radar as approximately the size of Canada. Miko lands and they pinpoint his location to Miami Beach, where the Space Foundation is conveniently located. Moments later, they pinpoint the location of the second light ball, Nukie, to all of Central Africa. Their satellites are powerful enough to say exactly where Miko landed, and later actually bring up visuals of specific individuals on the other side of the globe, but they can’t narrow Nukie’s location down any further than Central Africa. Brilliant, just brilliant. As an alarm sounds, signified by all of the computer screens flashing “alarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarmalarm,” Space Foundations agents drive somewhere in cars that are inexplicably marked “NASA Security.” Presumably, they are at Miami Beach, although it could just be an alley. The technicians alert the head researcher, a fat, bald idiot named Dr. Glynn, who calls Dr. Eric Harvey and tells him to hop the next plane to Central Africa to find the mysterious ball of light. The search shouldn’t take long; it’s not like Africa’s a huge continent or anything. The crappy narrator explains that the Space Foundation has captured Miko and they are holding him as part of the top secret “Project: Lightball.” One more time, that’s “Project: Lightball.” That’s your tax money at work. Also, by “captured” I mean “put Miko inside a storage closet full of plastic tarps and gave him tranquilizers.”

But this is a movie about Nukie, after all, so we cut to the little freak himself. He’s laying among a pile of rocks in the dark. Unfortunately, he gets up, allowing us all to see his hideousness. As if his voice wasn’t bad enough, Nukie looks like something that would have come out of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop if Jim had suffered a massive stroke and irreparable brain damage. He’s ugly enough as it is, but he gets exponentially more disgusting to behold when he gets wet. Luckily he only gets wet when he cries, and he only cries when he’s sad, and he’s only sad for eleven-tenths of the movie. Then his nose runs like a mucousy Victoria Falls, creating a Hitler moustache of revulsion that is only made worse by the streaks of ugly that run across his bloated face from his torrential tears. Nukie communicates with Miko by bouncing sound waves off the moon (seriously). Their conversation goes thusly:

Nukie: “MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKOOOOOOOO!”

Miko: “NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKIEEEEEEEEEE!”

(Repeat four hundred times.)

Poignant exchanges like that comprise roughly half the dialogue in “Nukie.” Most of the other half is made up of, the quotes “bad god” and “there’s nothing unusual here, Dr. Harvey.” Nukie wanders around for a while, explaining sixty times that he has to find Miko, then bitches and moans about it being too dark on Earth. And so he begins his central quest to piss off all of Africa. Meanwhile, back at the Space Foundation, the scientists discover that Miko is communicating with someone by detecting the signal on their “X-ray scanner.” Yes, apparently sound now travels on X-rays. This movie blows. Just to pound that point home, the scientists ponder if Miko is an animal, vegetable, or mineral while simultaneously monitoring his heartbeat, breathing, and brainwaves. Damn those tricky rocks and their infernal heartbeats! This does raise an interesting question: why did they give him tranquilizers if they didn’t know he was an animal? Oh, right, the whole “movie blowing” thing. I forgot. Fortunately, Dr. Glynn happens to mention that Miko is American property, prompting Miko to tell Nukie that he is in America.

Like a superball in a rubber room, we bounce back to Africa, but now it is daytime. Nukie stands on a hilltop, staring directly at the sun, bitching and moaning about it being too bright. If you don’t hate him yet, you will. He runs across a variety of animals and tries to talk to them all in English. The giraffe and rhinos don’t talk (incidentally, the rhinos “moo”…that’s right, they moo!), but the lion and baboons do. It’s a good thing lions and baboons aren’t stupid mutes like that fucking giraffe. The “baboon king” tells Nukie that his cousin Charlie, who lives among the humans, might be able to help him find America. Stupidity continues to ensue.

We then cut to the Space Foundation at 2:30 AM. Two scientists, Pamela Carter and Jim Connolly, have an utterly pointless conversation about absolutely nothing. This scene is the biggest waste of time since the Great Time Waste of 1949. Then, once again, we head back to Central Africa. The camera angle is slightly crooked. This bears mentioning because is it essentially the one and only shot in the entire movie that is not shot from the same straight-on angle. Tiko and Toki, two young twin brothers in loincloths, wander on camera. Luckily, like aliens, lions, and baboons (but not those damn giraffes or mooing rhinos), the twins speak perfect English. Nukie approaches them and explains that he comes from the stars. The twins run the hell away from him, securing their place as the most intelligent characters in the film. Nukie bitches and moans about being tired or being drunk or bloated or whatever is the current flavor of the hour. Back at the Space Foundation, Dr. Glynn dukes it out with the other scientists for the bad acting heavyweight title. He wins. By a lot. The competition is crushed by his nonsensical blathering over the fact that Miko is “dreaming about zebras.”

Nukie combines two of his biggest crowd-pleasers and bitches and moans about being tired and about it being too bright… at the same time! The action just doesn’t slow down with “Nukie!” Being the horrible space creature of action that he is, Nukie decides to go to sleep. As soon as he passes out, his body glows and then becomes invisible for no explicable reason. Unfortunately he becomes visible again a few seconds later, dashing my hopes for a Nukie-free “Nukie.” He wakes up and is so overjoyed that his “lightbeam transformer” is working again that he immediately turns into a spastic ball of light and zips around, shouting about how amazing it is to be flying a couple feet off the ground. I don’t know how exhilarating it could really be considering that at the start of the movie he was flying through outer space. He then discovers water, which he clearly identified in the first six seconds of the movie, but now he doesn’t know what it is. And what do we do when we don’t know what something is, kids? Be like Nukie, and put it in your mouth!

In the village of Urapi, Sister Ann, the most evil missionary in the world, chats as slowly as humanly possible with someone random over the radio. We learn throughout the course of the movie that whenever someone turns on a radio, they are automatically connected to some mystery voice that offers absolutely no relevant information but is quite happy to talk. In other words, any scene with a radio is automatically crap, as opposed to the rest of the scenes in the movie, which are…. okay, the whole thing’s crap. Sister Ann inquires about Eric Harvey, the scientist who might come to Urapi if he manages to trim his search down to that one specific village out of all of Central Africa. Out in the wilderness, Nukie passes out and we then cut to a scene of Miko screaming for Nukie. Miko is being pumped full of tranquilizers and Nukie sleeps two to three hundred more times. But wait! Nukie’s back! He bursts out of the cardboard earth, which I guess he somehow got sucked underneath. In doing so, he causes a hurricane and an earthquake that rip through Urapi, scaring the villagers. The twins run for their lives and for fear that someone will notice their hair is significantly longer than it was in a scene that supposedly took place earlier that same day. As the villagers huddle in the mission, praying to God for salvation, Sister Ann gives them words of encouragement, i.e., “you are dead!” Later, a pair of Urapi hunters find Nukie and the little revolting alien paralyzes one of them. We jump back to the village, where Dr. Eric Harvey arrives via helicopter. Sister Ann greets him warmly by telling him to get the hell out of Urapi. Just then, one of the hunters runs into the village carrying his paralyzed companion. Sangoma, the Urapi witch doctor, declares this new development (as well as the earthquake) to be the work of a “very bad god.” Yes, very bad indeed.

One rule of moviemaking is that people love monkeys. No matter how unnecessary it is to the storyline, a monkey will always have a place in any movie and in our hearts. Like all rules, though, this one has an exception: we call that exception “Charlie,” the talking monkey (cousin to the baboon king, remember?). Charlie’s sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to say totally irrelevant, unfunny lines at the same time that the human characters are discussing key plot points in the hope that the added audio will drown them out. To emphasize Charlie’s role and also Sias Odendal’s pact with Satan, Charlie’s lines are much, much louder than the ones he speaks over. To compound this idiocy, he has a voice that would make Gilbert Gottfried vomit urine. Nukie stumbles across him in the general store which is run by “the Corporal.” The Corporal is the other token white person in Urapi, and he also has the distinction of being the ugliest human being in the world. At least when you look at Nukie, you can tell yourself it’s just a movie. The Corporal actually has to look like that in real life. God, he’s like a warthog that collapsed in on itself. Charlie encourages Nukie to come inside so they can talk, and Nukie complies by knocking down a wall for no reason. Charlie offers him some candy, so Nukie destroys a stack of cans for, once again, no reason. Bear in mind though, that Charlie is somehow still the annoying one in this scene. Frightened yet? The Corporal intrudes on their conversation and Nukie runs away shouting “Cha-lie! Cha-lie!” because he has a retarded speech impediment. As he makes his escape into the wild, Nukie comes across the twins, who are staring down a horribly bluescreened lioness. Nukie saves their lives by pissing off the lioness until it makes horrible squealing noises and passes out. He then screams in tongues at the twins, who tell him they’ll help him find America if he’ll tell Sangoma he’s not a bad god, probably because if he doesn’t stop screaming at them, they’ll have to make horrible squealing noises and pass out.

At the Space Foundation, Miko leaves his isolation chamber and takes a seat in the control room. That’s right, he just walks out. Now that’s security! EDDI spouts nonsense at him for a while, then decides to hypnotize him with flashing colors. Miko falls asleep and EDDI produces the single most malevolent laugh I have ever heard. Why the computer laughs, I’m not quite sure. Back in Urapi, the confusion continues to mount as Sister Ann leads Eric in prayer, then yells at him for not leading himself in prayer. She is clearly the worst goddamn nun in history. Just when things couldn’t get any more baffling, Nukie returns to Urapi and spies Eric’s helicopter. Mistaking it for a spaceship, he climbs in, takes off, and promptly crashes. The movie has not, nor will ever, explain why Nukie would possibly need a spaceship or even know what one is when he can simply turn into a flying ball of light capable of interstellar travel. I offer this theory: this movie sucks. My theory can be applied to all three of the conundrums presented in this paragraph. I expect the Nobel Prize committee to take notice. Back at the Space Foundation, Miko wakes up, still in the control room. Yep, EDDI successfully hypnotized him but failed to alert any of the security guards. Its protocol apparently consists of hypnotizing intruders, then waiting for them to wake up and making small talk. EDDI’s a super-intelligent computer capable of subduing and conversing with anyone it chooses, yet it doesn’t have any definition for “friend,” “feel,” “feeling,” or “music,” so Miko reprograms it for sentience by hitting a total of three keys. This scene overflows with stupidity in such a way that my primitive human brain cannot fully comprehend. However, it’s absolutely nothing compared to what comes next. In an attempt to convince Sangoma that he’s not a bad god, Nukie sneaks into Urapi and makes all the pots in the village explode for no reason. Sangoma declares war on Nukie, and the little bastard laughs as the villagers chase after him in fast motion. Then Eric fixes the crashed helicopter with a stick of gum. Legend has it that if you read this paragraph twice in a row, your brain implodes. I know mine did.

Sangoma makes the decision to send the twins out into the bush with no supplies in hopes that when one of them dies, the bad god will go away. Sister Ann whines about it, saying she thought she got rid off all that tribal religion “rubbish” when Sangoma was a little boy. Apparently Sister Ann was a missionary when she was six. She sends the drunken, angry Corporal out to find the twins, then insists to Eric that there is no alien in the area for the forty-ninth time. Expressing her concern for the twins, she knocks Dr. Glynn right out of the top spot for worst human acting in the movie by breaking her entire monologue into two word sentences.

Ann: “I’m afraid. (Pause) I’m going. (Pause) To lose. (Pause) Two of God’s children. (Ludicrously long pause)The witchdoctor. (Pause) Has thrown. (Pause)The twins. (Pause)Toki and Tiko. (Pause)Out of the village. (Pause long enough to write all this down) Out there. (Pause) Into the bushveldt. (Pause) Alone. (Pause) Unprotected. (One really huge pause made of a million itty bitty pauses) A trial. (Pause) To see. (Pause) Which one will survive, and which one will die.

Speaking of the twins, Toki and Tiko walk through the plains in late afternoon. One remarks that it’s getting dark, and then it cuts to the sky. It then cuts back to the twins a second later and it is mysteriously midnight. Shouldn’t have said anything, Toki! Or Tiko. It doesn’t matter, you’re both dumb savages! Nukie appears in his lightball form, then unfortunately resumes his normal shape. If I were one of the twins, I would have speared Nukie through the brain right then and there. That’s eighty pounds of delicious alien! Oddly enough, the twins are happy to see Nukie, even though he destroyed their village and got them cast out to die. That’s what friends are for, I guess. They explain to Nukie that Sangoma spoke to their ancestors, who live among the stars, and they told him that one of the twins had to die. Always the tactician, Nukie ridicules away all of their beliefs by insisting that he’s from the stars and their ancestors aren’t there. Thanks a bunch, Nukie! He then shows the twins how children from his neck of the universe “discover sleep,” and proceeds to put on a show that consists of a horrible combination of wretched synthesizers, shitty disco dancing, and off rhythm fireworks, which serve as a distraction for Nukie to blow some sort of date rape gas at the twins that makes them conk right out. Since it’s a PG movie, Odendal chose not to show the anal rape of the unconscious young boys. Instead, he shows something far, far worse.

Back at the Space Foundation, EDDI tells Dr. Carter that he thinks she smells good – Miko must have reprogrammed him to be able to smell – and that he loves her. He then sings to her in the most terrifying manner possible. If any person or machine ever sang to me like that, I’d call an exorcist, and when he arrived, I’d stab him in the face with a carving knife as a sacrifice to Grongomet the Weaver King in hopes that he might remove the curse. On the subject of possessed machines (the continuity in this movie rocks me like a hurricane of ether), Nukie returns to Urapi, declares that he’s not a bad god, then enters the machinery of a motorcycle, causing it to come to life and crash into the Corporal’s jeep. He has no problem taking control of the motorcycle, but he couldn’t do the same for the helicopter. Oh, Sias Odendal, you so crazy! No, really, you need to be institutionalized, you bastard. The Corporal tries to convince Sangoma to capture and sell Nukie rather than kill him, but Sangoma refuses. He’s got the right idea: Nukie has to be stopped. We return to the Space Foundation to find EDDI scrolling through binary code and reading it aloud. Yes, that is correct, this sophisticated computer is actually programmed to read ones and freaking zeros out loud.

I’ll give you a moment to get acclimated to that, because this paragraph is about to take a turn for the stupid. Think you’re ready? Well, you’re wrong. There’s no way to be ready for this. Here we go: EDDI decides it’s bored, so it calls Miko out to play. They play some “music,” if you consider an all-spoons band to be music, which catches the attention of the evil Dr. Glynn. He doesn’t think anything’s strange about the little lumpy alien being out of the isolation room, but the computer playing music, well that’s just unheard of! Oh no! How will Miko and EDDI get out of this one? Here’s how: by turning Dr. Glynn into a clown. If your heart didn’t stop, you didn’t read that quite right, so I’ll reiterate – the computer turns the NASA scientist into a clown by “raising his brainwaves.” And how does the good doctor act like a clown? By bouncing up and down like a moron and stripping, of course! If that doesn’t teach kids to fear clowns, their parents need to start spanking them with a taser. Dr. Glynn couldn’t be happier to be a clown – it was apparently his childhood dream. You know, that’s why he became a biologist. It makes sense, when you think about it long enough, and when you’re on drugs. Dr. Rhinestone, the requisite coldhearted scientist, shows up and puts a stop to all the clowning. She gets hers, though; EDDI tells her she “sucks!” Thanks, EDDI! And here I was afraid you were going to waste my time!

Jumping back to Urapi like a no-legged kangaroo, we find Eric and Sister Ann locked in yet another inane debate. This time Ann finally explains why she wants Eric to leave. She blames America for the destruction of all of Africa, and since he’s an American, he must be solely responsible. “Beer, cigarettes, sofas,” she declares. “You call it ‘progress.’ I call it ‘extermination.'” That’s right, sofas are responsible for the extermination of the Africans. Damn you, sofas! Damn you all to Hell! Anyfuck, the twins are still wandering around as if they actually had someplace to go (reminder: they don’t), and Toki gets bitten by a cobra. Tiko, ever the caring brother, tries to save him by stabbing him with a stick. The Corporal shows up in his jeep, drunk and ornery as ever, with Eric right behind him in his helicopter. Nukie appears and the Corporal shoots him. Yes! Three times. Yes! With tranquilizer darts. SHIT! Meanwhile, EDDI refuses to work with Dr. Rhinestone because she “has no feelings.” Take that, doctor! Back at the mission hospital in Urapi, Eric tells Tiko where America is. In case you were wondering, this was the only reason Eric was in the movie. Sister Ann still tries to convince Eric that Nukie doesn’t exist, even though he’s seen him with his own eyes. Just then, the movie ends. Just kidding, this movie never ends because I am in Hell and this is my punishment.

EDDI is randomly watching Tiko on its monitors. It’s not powerful enough to trace an unidentified flying object’s crash site to anywhere more specific than Central fucking Africa, but it can get audio and video of a specific individual in the middle of nowhere. Those popping sounds you’re hearing are your brain cells. Miko’s back at the controls once again and tells Tiko that he’s near Miami Beach, and – wait a second. Miko… Tiko… Toki… hey! These names aren’t original! They suck! Well, that cuts it, this movie is just no good at all. Back in Urapi, everyone’s hair is noticeably shorter, even though the scene takes place about an hour after the last one. It must be the work of a bad god. The Corporal keeps trying to convince Sangoma to sell Nukie, and Sangoma keeps refusing. Of course the Corporal is a bastard, so he goes to the radio and miraculously tunes right in to a person who wants to buy the alien. Tiko frees Nukie from the cage he was being kept in, but the Corporal stops them from escaping. Suddenly Charlie the monkey leaps on the Corporal’s back, failing to distract him in the least. Oh well, at least he speaks over everyone else’s lines. Christ, there should be a support group for anyone who’s ever had to listen to Charlie speak. It hurts so, so much. Somehow Nukie and Tiko escape, but not before breaking into the mission hospital to tell Toki where they’re going. Sister Ann uses the radio and tells the mystery person on the other end that they don’t have the alien, which they do. In exchange, the mystery person tells Ann that Eric went back to America. Now, you’re probably wondering how the radio actually had pertinent information, when I stated earlier that such a thing never happens. Don’t worry, Eric returns to Africa in the next scene. It is never explained why he left in the first place, nor do I care.

Miko sits at the controls once again, this time pleading with EDDI to open the door so he can leave the Space Foundation. EDDI explains that it’s not in his programming, and then says that it is. Yeah, I don’t get it either, nor do I understand why Miko can reprogram EDDI to have emotions, sing, play music, and turn scientists into clowns, but not to open the goddamn door. I guess it doesn’t matter, since EDDI agrees to open the door roughly two seconds later. Miko doesn’t leave, though. That would make sense, and we sure wouldn’t want something like that coming along and screwing up this masterpiece of crap. Instead, Miko sneaks into Dr. Carter’s office and hides in her laundry. The other scientists notice that Miko is missing, which is sort of strange since they didn’t notice when he was sitting at the goddamn computer for half the movie. Dr. Glynn doesn’t know what to do until EDDI tells him to “be a clown,” so he blames Dr. Rhinestone for Miko’s disappearance and resigns. He’s probably off somewhere today, bouncing and stripping for Barnum and Bailey. That’s the life. Specifically, the creepy, male-clown-stripper life. The narrator then informs us that Project: Lightball was cancelled. Oh no.

That night Nukie tells Tiko, “if you don’t know what to do, look to the stars and wish; and if it is a good wish, the stars will hear you and it will happen,” which is the movie’s tagline. It is also the worst tagline in the history of the world. Who the hell would ever remember something like that? That’s not even the whole thing, that’s just the bit that made it onto the box. I mean, what the hell were they thinking? “Be a clown” would have been a better tagline than that! ARRRGH! Maybe the next scene will calm me down. Let’s see… it’s daytime and Sister Ann is interrogating the hospitalized Toki about Tiko’s whereabouts, but Toki suddenly doesn’t speak any English. Strange, he was clearly speaking English in previous scenes, and OH GOD THIS MOVIE MAKES ME SO ANGRY, I HAVE ACTUALLY TURNED GREEN AND DOUBLED IN MASS. GREASY HULK SMASH SHITTY MOVIE! RAAAAAAAH!

Nukie and Tiko keep walking in a random direction, supposedly heading for America. Nukie complains about being tired, and apparently when he becomes tired his English gets worse. If there’s one thing worse than listening to a hideous alien with a faux British accent whine, it’s listening to a hideous alien with a faux British accent whine very poorly. The Corporal catches up with Nukie and Tiko in his jeep, but the tricky duo steal the vehicle and Tiko immediately drives it into a river. Way to drive there, no-drive! Nukie flies out of the passenger seat and into the rapids, then goes over a huge waterfall. So, water was dangerous after all! Nice foreshadowing, Odendal. I still hate you and all you represent. There is a short scene back at the Space Foundation where “Project: Lightball” is obviously still going on, as Dr. Rhinestone watches Tiko on one monitor and flashing data about Miko on the others. I suppose it’s also possible that she just gets off on watching little African boys, but in any event this scene serves absolutely no purpose other than to waste time before we find out that Nukie is fine. Somehow Tiko catches up with him and pulls him out of the river. Nukie decides they’re not getting anywhere by walking, so he turns Tiko and himself into balls of light and they fly away. That’s right, he could have done that the whole time. Nukie runs out of energy and crashes, so Tiko lands. They find themselves next to a random abandoned house. Tiko is dismayed and the audience is overjoyed to see Nukie finally dying. Saddened by the loss of his horrible alien friend who almost got him and many others killed on numerous occasions, Tiko runs around like an idiot screaming for Miko.

Then Tiko remembers the movie’s laughably bad tagline, and he wishes that everyone was there, including Toki and Miko, and that Nukie was alive. Eric, Sister Ann, the Corporal, Toki, Charlie (yes, Charlie, too), and some random woman who I think might be the twins’ mother show up in a donkey-drawn wagon made from the back half of a Chevy. Miko shows up as a ball of light a moment later, and Nukie comes back to life. Nukie and Miko dry their tears of sadness over their separation and weep twice as many tears of joy over their reunion. As they hug, it is the most concentrated mass of ugliness since Margaret Thatcher and Janet Reno did that lesbian porno. The two aliens prepare to take off, but before they go, Charlie asks them to take him too. Perhaps as penance for having caused so much destruction while on Earth, or perhaps because they want some monkey to eat on their trip home, Nukie and Miko agree. The three of them turn into balls of light and fly off over more bad outer space clipart, dancing around one another like epileptic sperm. There are two ways to approach the end of this movie: the first possibility is that everyone who showed up was already trying to find Nukie and Tiko and it’s just coincidence that they showed up when they did, in which case all the humans would have had to catch up with Nukie and Tiko, who were traveling at light speed, in their crappy wagon. The second possibility, and the one that I think we’re supposed to believe, is that Tiko’s wish came true, in which case I have to wonder why the hell Nukie didn’t just make that wish in the first place? The wishing thing was his idea, after all. It’s an ending that really makes you think; specifically, it makes you think how anything could possibly be so very bad.

Most of the godawful movies I have ever had to endure were so bad that I laughed; “Nukie” made me wince throughout its entirety. This movie has saturated every part of my body with its taint. It is, by far, the worst thing that has ever happened to me. There is no part of “Nukie” that is not directly insulting to its audience. The camera moves once every twenty minutes, which is almost a blessing because it reduces the number of close-ups of Nukie, Miko, or the Corporal, all three of whom couldn’t be any more repugnant if they bathed in their own crap. When the script isn’t being horribly redundant, it contradicts itself for no reason. It honestly feels like Taylor took Odendal’s story and realized it wasn’t long enough for a feature film, so he threw the words “Miko” and “Nukie” in a couple thousand times apiece. The majority of the supposedly main characters serve no purpose whatsoever. The movie would have been exactly the same if Miko had just broken a leg when he landed in the beginning and he was never captured. In an insane effort to emphasize just how unbelievably bad the script is, Odendal gave it to a group of absolutely incompetent actors. The voice actors should be banned from ever working again, then shot through the throat. The running time on this cockswaggling filth is supposedly just over and hour and a half, but the action is so ponderously slow that time loses all meaning. If you put this movie in your VCR at 7:00 PM (not that you should, under any circumstances, come into possession of this movie), it will be over around 2:00 AM. It is utterly impossible for me to exaggerate just how bad “Nukie” is. This is a case where our current rating system just doesn’t go low enough. If I was forced to choose between having my ovaries removed sans anesthesia and with a rusty grapefruit spoon, or watching “Nukie” again, I would choose the barbaric surgery, everytime. In the words of Tommy Chong after a particularly bad blunt… “That’s some bad shit.”

In the meantime, my muse has gone on strike as a result of being forced to watch this disaster and is currently avoiding my attempts at negotiation. I am very concerned because it has been actively hinting at hiring a lawyer and suing me for “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” as well as “Muse Abuse” and “Muse Endangerment” and “Blatant Disregard for Muse Safety”.

If I am found guilty, my muse stands to gain a hefty financial reward as well as freedom from all muse responsibilities. My case for the defense is understandably, and unfortunately, weak. I’m hoping to settle out of court.

Until such time, my pen stands sadly mute. I can do nothing but beg for your forgiveness, and hope you will have mercy on me. All I can say is, don’t watch “Nukie”…. EVER.