Love and Monsters

As dystopian romantic comedies go, Love and Monsters might not break much new ground, although it has fun along the way.

Alas, we’ve seen plenty of adventures about lovable losers defying the odds in a quest to reunite with their one true love. But it’s never been done with mutant insects standing in the way.

Using a tone that’s more cartoonish than threatening, the result generates some big laughs, even as it struggles to maintain a deeper emotional connection to our nerdy hero and his underdog trek.

As the film opens, Joel (Dylan O’Brien) is living in an underground bunker with fellow survivors of a biological catastrophe that wiped out 95 percent of the human population at the hands of jumbo bugs and aggressive amphibians.

Hunkered down for seven years, he yearns for his high school sweetheart, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), whose safe space is 80 miles away. Despite a reputation for being more timid than brave, he decides to make a run for it.

So in reality, he’s battling his own lack of survival instincts as much as the oversized vermin lurking behind every tree or underneath every puddle.

During the weeklong journey, he bonds with a loyal dog, learns the ropes from a surface-dwelling adventurer (Michael Rooker) and his young daughter, and endures several close calls. More importantly, he discovers that the gargantuan critters might not be the biggest threat to humanity, after all.

Love and Monsters embraces the inherent absurdity in its premise with an appealing playfulness. Forget the flimsy explanation for how the world came to this unfortunate predicament in the first place.

The film suffers from some contrivances, of course, and can’t resist indulging in some primitive videogame-style confrontations between man and beast. However, South African director Michael Matthews and his team draw us in with a vibrant futuristic landscape and an imaginative array of creature effects.

Just like he did in the Maze Runner franchise, O’Brien makes an agreeable post-apocalyptic tour guide by finding the right balance of meek and macho despite having to act by himself much of the time.

Although it forces a heartwarming message about overcoming fears, the film shows that — literally and figuratively — when it comes to love and monsters, we can have both.

Rated PG-13, 108 minutes.