OK First up. I'm not the target audience for this movie and I didn't see it when I was a kid so I'm not looking at it with the warm glow of nostalgia. So I guess I'm going to p!ss some people off with this review.
The first half of this movie is, not to mince words, great. Even to my middle-aged jaded eyes it is a great start. Nicely acted, nicely paced, and nicely directed ( I loved the opening shot and the 2 subsequent UFOs that weren't). David, the eldest son of a Standard Disney All American Family, slips and falls whilst in the woods one night. Returning home he finds eight years have passed. Simltaniously an alien Space ship has crashed into a power pylon; later the NASA scientists studying it discover that David has information in his head that directly links him with the alien space ship. They start to analyse the knowledge that has been placed in his brain...
Up until this point the movie has been building up a nice eerie edge, The scenes where David is reunited with his family have an emotional punch. There is some real tension building up, tension which dissolves almost immediately Sarah Jessica Parker and her obvious plot device on wheels turns up and is only just being built up again when David enters the ship (via the obvious plot device on wheels) As soon as he steps onto the space ship the whole movie just falls flat on its arse.
David just flies about a bit then has the star charts which were (for no apparent reason)pumped into his brain during the missing eight years read by the spaceship who managed to loose his copy while crashing into the power line...? What!? Oh come on! This is stupid. Even for a Disney kids movie, this is stupid stupid stupid film-making. The alien robot ship then turns into a cool talking dude, shows him the other 'samples' one of which eats David's hat then belches (a particularly thin and annoying 'joke' that seems to amuse American movie directors and no one else). David teaches the spaceship about music - a space-faring race that has examined dozens of other sentient species, can speak English, and has never heard of music?. Then they fly about for a bit unable to find Florida. When they do get there, via Japan, David decides that he wants to attempt to travel back in time to 1987. He travels back in time. He doesn't disintegrate. He is reunited with his family for the second time in the movie. Was it all a dream? No! He still has the cute little orphaned alien he picked up with him.
OK, maybe I'm being harsh here. It's a kids film after all. But it started out so well. It showed great promise. Then it just copped out the second half of the film is just David flying the ship around. There is no threat, no mystery, no plot, no tension. It's boring. And Max the spaceship was for me,after about 3 minutes, a winner of the prestigious Ja-Ja Binks most Annoying Character in a SF Movie of the Year Award.
The first half of this movie is, not to mince words, great. Even to my middle-aged jaded eyes it is a great start. Nicely acted, nicely paced, and nicely directed ( I loved the opening shot and the 2 subsequent UFOs that weren't). David, the eldest son of a Standard Disney All American Family, slips and falls whilst in the woods one night. Returning home he finds eight years have passed. Simltaniously an alien Space ship has crashed into a power pylon; later the NASA scientists studying it discover that David has information in his head that directly links him with the alien space ship. They start to analyse the knowledge that has been placed in his brain...
Up until this point the movie has been building up a nice eerie edge, The scenes where David is reunited with his family have an emotional punch. There is some real tension building up, tension which dissolves almost immediately Sarah Jessica Parker and her obvious plot device on wheels turns up and is only just being built up again when David enters the ship (via the obvious plot device on wheels) As soon as he steps onto the space ship the whole movie just falls flat on its arse.
David just flies about a bit then has the star charts which were (for no apparent reason)pumped into his brain during the missing eight years read by the spaceship who managed to loose his copy while crashing into the power line...? What!? Oh come on! This is stupid. Even for a Disney kids movie, this is stupid stupid stupid film-making. The alien robot ship then turns into a cool talking dude, shows him the other 'samples' one of which eats David's hat then belches (a particularly thin and annoying 'joke' that seems to amuse American movie directors and no one else). David teaches the spaceship about music - a space-faring race that has examined dozens of other sentient species, can speak English, and has never heard of music?. Then they fly about for a bit unable to find Florida. When they do get there, via Japan, David decides that he wants to attempt to travel back in time to 1987. He travels back in time. He doesn't disintegrate. He is reunited with his family for the second time in the movie. Was it all a dream? No! He still has the cute little orphaned alien he picked up with him.
OK, maybe I'm being harsh here. It's a kids film after all. But it started out so well. It showed great promise. Then it just copped out the second half of the film is just David flying the ship around. There is no threat, no mystery, no plot, no tension. It's boring. And Max the spaceship was for me,after about 3 minutes, a winner of the prestigious Ja-Ja Binks most Annoying Character in a SF Movie of the Year Award.