Movie Review: 'Max Reload and the Nether Blasters' is Charming Low Budget Fun

Max Reload and the Nether Blasters is a whole lot of fun. This silly little gamer comedy is just the right mix of goofy characters and familiar teen movie tropes. There’s nothing wrong with a little familiarity and nostalgia if you do it well and the directing duo of Scott Conditt Jeremy Tremp do it quite well. They’ve managed to keep a familiar story about a kid learning to be a team player fresh with good jokes and funny supporting performances.

Tom Plumley stars in Max Reload and the Nether Blasters as Max Jenkins. Max is a hardcore gamer and we meet him while he is playing some sort of questing warrior game. Max is teamed with his best friend Reggie (Joey Morgan) and his co-worker, Liz (Hassie Harrison) but Max is not exactly the team player type. When Max runs into battle alone he winds up getting everyone killed and allowing a wizard to steal all of their cool in game loot.

So, obviously, Max’s journey will be to learn to believe in his friends and work as a team. Now, let’s get to the journey. Max is obsessed with an old console game called Nether Blaster. The game was a smash in the 80’s, spawning successful sequels and a powerful new gaming company. That was until one of the creators, Eugene Wilder (Greg Grunberg), flipped out, burned down their warehouse with their latest game and disappeared.

That game has since become a gaming holy grail called Nether Dungeon. Max and others have heard rumors that copies of the game still existed but they’d not surfaced until late that night at the videogame store where Max works. While Max’s boss, Chuck (Kevin Smith), is busy with a new VR game in the back, Max finds a strange old box with an elderly gaming console and a copy of Nether Dungeon that may be the only one in existence.

Not concerning himself with the mysterious origin of the box and the game, Max rushes home to play and finds a rather mediocre gaming experience. That doesn’t stop Max from scanning the game code and posting it online before some alien force explodes his hard-drive. Max wakes the following morning to word from Reggie that his web post about Nether Dungeon has gone viral. Unfortunately, what Max doesn’t know is that Nether Dungeon is cursed and his upload has unleashed that curse on gamers everywhere.

That’s the kick off of the plot of Max Reload and the Nether Blasters. I will leave you to discover the rest. It’s worth the ride. Max Reload and the Nether Blasters is a movie with modest ambitions well accomplished. The movie is just plain fun. The cast is game and clearly enjoying themselves, especially Kevin Smith as the Dad-gamer. Part creep-part geek, Smith appears to relish his role. The Silent Bob creator earns several big laughs in a relatively small role.

Young Tom Plumley anchors the cast of Max Reload and the Nether Blasters and I would like to tell you more about him but he’s not even credited on the movie’s IMDB page. I can tell you that he looks like a young Jon Cryer and has the same gleam in his eye that Cryer brought to his teen years roles in Pretty and Pink and Hiding Out. Plumley is a little green but he’s never bad in Max Reload and the Nether Blasters. He’s helped greatly by a fun supporting cast.

Greg Grunberg is an actor I enjoy in just about everything he does. It’s always a treat to see Grunberg dating back to his charming role on Felicity to here where he has one of the more sizable roles he’s had in some time. Grunberg and Joseph D Reitman have comic chemistry as former partners forced to work together again by these bizarre circumstances. Grunberg and Reitman are clearly having a great time in Max Reload and the Nether Blasters and their joy is infectious.

Max Reload and the Nether Blasters began life as a modest Kickstarter project with a goal of $15,000 that it eventually surpassed. That low budget feel is a strength of Max Reload and the Nether Blasters. The directors and their set designers and effects team make a whole lot out of a whole lot of nothing and I was completely charmed by the DIY spirit in the practical and computer effects.

The name Max Reload and the Nether Blasters recalls low budget sci-fi of the 50’s while the gaming aesthetic places the movie into our modern context. The mix of old and new extends to the cast with geek icons Smith and Grunberg standing aside a new group of rising geek stars. Directors Conditt and Tremp do a lot with very little and the modest investment pays off with a very fun movie.

Max Reload the Nether Blasters is available via many streaming services on Friday August 7th.