That, and a general lack of urgency are the main things holding “Get Duked!” back from being as good as it is promising. You don’t have to read the movie’s press notes to know that writer/director Ninian Doff tried to make a politically engaged movie that was more fun than didactic. Still, knowing that Doff feels “we need to make protest movies that don’t feel preachy” helps to explain why “Get Duked!” works best when it’s least serious.
Doff thankfully wastes no time in establishing (or dispensing with) his movie’s high-concept premise: a trio of Glaswegian juvenile delinquents—Dean (Rian Gordon), DJ Beatroot (Juneja), and Duncan (Lewis Gribben)—are forced to undertake a miles-long schlep, I mean team-building exercise through the Highlands with relatively straight-laced Ian (Samuel Bottomley), who hopes to add more padding to his college application. The lads can’t use their cell phones—“There's no reception in the Highlands”—and are soon preyed upon by the Duke and the Duchess (Eddie Izzard and Georgie Glen), a couple of generically out-of-touch killers who are all kids these days this, and purity of the British bloodline that.
“Get Duked!” is a social commentary, you see, though it’s not very serious about it, as Doff notes. For example: the Duke and Duchess establish their sociopathic, “The Wicker Man”-adjacent paganism with an ritualistic auto-tune rap, which is ostentatiously juxtaposed with DJ Beatroot’s boisterous and relatively engaging freestyling. You can also tell that Doff is down (ie: up) with DJ Beatroot and his friends based on the movie’s ostentatious use of hip-hop cues from Danny Brown and Run the Jewels: “Ain’t It Funny” and “Legend Has It,” respectively. Both songs are great—and Doff did direct the award-winning music video for RtJ’s “Love Again”—but using them as leitmotifs to puff up DJ Beatroot and his friends is the sort of pandering that begs to be mocked with Gen Z’s answer to my generation’s already dated “Ok, Boomer” and “How do you do, fellow kids?” memes.
Doff’s tendency of presenting DJ Beatroot and his friends as harmless knuckleheads invites unfortunate comparisons to Mr. Carlyle (Jonathan Arris), the boys’ stuffy, youth pastor-esque chaperone. Carlyle abandons the boys, thinking that if he leaves them alone, they’ll be forced to bond, cooperate, and build character. Doff similarly tends to let viewers fill in most of the gaps where his kids’ personalities should be. There isn’t even much of a generic clash of personalities between Ian and his reluctant hiking buddies. All we know about DJ Beatroot’s group is that they’re not particularly bright, nor is their juvenile behavior especially menacing: their rap sheets are presented in jittery, hyper-edited mini-montages, and are mostly defined by, uh, bathroom arson (both Dean and Duncan try to set their feces ablaze). Boys will be boys, and that’s presumably ok since these boys aren’t so bad, especially when compared with the Duke and Duchess’ tortured, hatefully stupid received wisdom, or the local cops’ insensitivity and careerist ambitions.
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