“But, Dad, they’re not really bad, they’re just… stupid.”
Justin’s rating: We come in pieces
Justin’s review: Sometimes you don’t even have to think very hard to figure out how a movie’s premise came to be. With Spaced Invaders, you know that some desperate scriptwriter facing a brainstorming deadline suddenly remembered that 1983 public domain broadcast of Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds and figured that this could be the mighty backbone of an amazing narrative. Because, of course, that’s what kids in 1990 were begging their parents to take them to see: a movie based on a Depression-era episode of Punk’d.
It really wasn’t the best idea, nor should it have gotten past a pitch meeting unless a blackmail was involved.
It is Halloween night in some podunk midwestern town. As the local DJ plays the Wells’ classic broadcast, a scout ship for a (now-destroyed) Martian fleet picks up the signal and figures that an actual invasion of earth is underway and that they should join in on the fun.
The ship is crewed by the dorkiest of an already-dorky fleet, and I’m pretty sure that five C-list actors were hired at random and asked to go with whatever accent they thought they could pull off. The lead guy said, “Jack Nicholson!” and another guy was like, “Evil German!” and the other three were deeply drunk.
The Martians do look pretty good, but their animatronics or puppetry isn’t quite up to the task of emoting — or even handling complex conversations. It’s not as bad as Meatballs II’s alien, but it’s light years worse than E.T., even though this came out eight years later. I guess the filmmakers figured that most of the movie would take place at night in the shadows and that overexaggerated hand gestures and loud voices could fool us into accepting it.
So with great slapstick and pratfalls, the Martians land and attempt to take over the town of Big Bean. But since this is Halloween night, everyone figures they’re just kids in costumes and treat them as such. It also doesn’t help that their (somewhat more competent) leader gets separated and has to make his own robot slave, nor that the local sheriff’s kid quickly figures out that something’s really screwy with these trick-or-treat companions.
Before long, the somewhat incompetent aliens are at war against the somewhat panicky Illinois residents, and what ensues ping-pongs between being cringy and reluctantly funny. What’s reluctantly funny? That’s when you don’t want something to be funny because you’re obviously above it… but you laugh at it anyway, because somewhere inside of you is a seven-year-old.
Spaced Invaders is largely dumb, but it throws itself so whole-heartedly into this stupid premise that occasionally it is pretty humorous. Still, I don’t think it has much appeal or value for grown-ups, so unless you’re a wonderfully strange kid surfing this weird corner of the internet, it’s probably not the movie for you.
Didja notice?
- Sir, I think we’re being attacked by overambitious opening credits!
- Blasted Martian skeleton in the first few minutes
- This movie’s so cheap it can’t even afford product placement for its generic cola
- The senior citizens being sucked off the porch was pretty funny and well-done
- These aliens use way too many earth idioms to be aliens
- And where’d that Martian get 3-D glasses?
- That’s a good duck costume, kid. I like that he commits to the voice even during normal conversations about a girl’s dead mom.
- It’s an ’80s scifi movie, so of COURSE there’s an adorable little robot!
- Giving kids cigarettes for trick or treat is classified as a “trick.” Also, illegal.
- The mom is remarkably cool at having a missile shot out of her car
- The mom then just drops off a whole bunch of “kids” out in the middle of nowhere? Call CPS!
- Never mess with a Frisbee Duck
- “Surrender peacefully so we can execute you in an orderly fashion.” OK, that was pretty funny.
Mutant Reviewers 