Nukie

Year releasted: 1993

by Nathan Rabin
September 18th, 2002

While E.T. spawned a lot of opportunistic clones, including the McDonald's-loving extraterrestrial of Mac And Me, none have been quite as repellent as Nukie, the shriveled, feces-colored hero of the 1993 film that bears his name. As the movie opens, Nukie and his brother Miko are traveling through space as globs of white light. The two somehow crash-land on separate hemispheres: Nukie lands in Africa, while Miko ends up at the American Space Foundation, the sparsely manned home to rows upon rows of blinking computers. Like many unfortunate alien-Americans, Miko is heavily sedated and subjected to a battery of tests designed to test the limits of his pain threshold. Nukie, meanwhile, finds himself in an unpopulated region of Africa, where he's unable to communicate with the local animals. Sobbing, he cries out, "I don't like this planet. Nobody talks. Nobody listens. I'm tired, tired, tired. I wish the earth would swallow me up." But the alien's heartfelt plea for death goes tragically unfulfilled. In desperation, he seeks out the counsel of a similarly bleak-minded simian kingpin, who warns the repulsive space-beast, "Beware of the humans. They are dangerous. They have guns, and whatever they see, they like to kill." Sure enough, the next human the space depressive encounters is a gun-toting "old sauce-head" who tries to kill him. Nukie finds better companionship in the form of a Pepsi-loving talking chimpanzee in a ratty wife-beater; he offers Nukie candy, but later labels him a "silly ding-dong." Miko telepathically sends his brother anguished cries for help, and Nukie finds allies in a pair of youthful African twins sent by their tribe to wander in the wilderness until one dies. When the twins refuse to sleep, Nukie shows them "how children discover sleep" on his planet, a process that involves powder-blue smoke, a clumsily choreographed dance routine set to a throbbing disco beat, and an elaborate fireworks display. Back in America, Miko re-programs the Space Foundation's computer system to make a creepy, vaguely sinister pass at a pretty female scientist, and attempts to win over his sadistic torturers by tapping into their deepest thoughts and desires. The hapless, effete Nukie is eventually shot and kidnapped, but he manages to escape with the aid of his sassy simian companion. Alongside one of the twins, he reverts to glowing-blob form and flies to America, where Miko similarly escapes the sinister clutches of the Space Foundation and is tearfully reunited with his space-sibling. The brothers join the wisecracking talking chimpanzee and fly away from Earth, presumably headed for further adventures on less traumatic planets.