Ugh. MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE is a chore to finish. I've now seen it twice and both times I lost total interest and played games on my phone for about 15 minutes or so in the middle of the movie. It challenges you to watch it from start to finish and I failed each time. It's 90 near insufferable minutes of juvenile gags and thoroughly unlikeable characters. Many of the worst movies have a charm that I love but comedies don't often reach that level of "so-bad- it's good". They're so bad at being intentionally funny that it becomes almost painful to witness. Let's start with the "plot": four human aliens are wandering lost through the universe. For whatever reason, they get tired of the one named Bernard (Mel Smith, who I only recently realized was the Albino in THE PRINCESS BRIDE) and abandon him, leaving him locked outside of the main ship on the spaceball court while they bail in the smaller shuttle. Crashing immediately on Earth, the three aliens
Desmond (Jimmy Nail), Sandra (Joanne Pierce), and Julian (Paul Bown)
are taken by the British government and discovered to be absolute fools. A low-level TV news employee (Griff Rhys Jones) bumbles his way behind government lines and gains access to the aliens, helping them to make an escape. Once they're on the outside, he becomes their manager and tours the nation with them as some sort of garbage rock band or something. Meanwhile, Bernard is determined to reconnect with his fellow idiots.
The movie aspires to be a spoof of popular science fiction titles with nods to ALIEN, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. But spoofs are funny so I refuse to acknowledge this as one. My disgust stems from the fact that the movie tries so hard to be zany. I hate failed zaniness. We're talking gags like Bernard's conversation with a roadside trashcan he believes to be a dominant life form. Or his fumbling to scratch his nose through his space helmet before a sneeze covers his faceplate in a violent blast of snot. It always takes the easy route, opting for lamest of slapstick humor or the corniest dialogue. The writing, from co-writers Smith and Jones, is atrocious. The aliens come a planet known as Blob. Desmond proudly shows off a piece of alien technology: a pen. You get it everyone? They're morons! It's a joke! Seriously though, MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE feels like a movie for children, but kids aren't going to get the references. And what about scenes like the one where Bernard is rescued from his isolation by hitchhiking with an alien who looks like a mummified corpse (one of the few funny moments in the movie)? A mummified corpse who was hoping for "special payment" for the ride until he discovering Bernard is male and ejecting him into space. Dead creepers don't really have a place in a kids' movie. Who is this movie for and why are we supposed to care?
There isn't a single character I care about in this movie. I have no idea who the main character is supposed to be. It might be the three aliens who become a travelling rock band. But they're horrible people, so that can't be right. They're ignorant and selfish. And Sandra's singing, that the aliens' musical career seems contingent on, is ear-splitting. She's horrible but the movie acts as if she's a phenomenal talent and we're expected to go along with it. On the subject of the aliens' musical tour, did anyone else get a Katy Perry Super Bowl halftime show vibe? The aliens dress in colorful costumes and ride out onto the stage in an enormous toy spaceship. Just me? Anyway, no, I didn't care about them. Bernard? Maybe. He's portrayed as a victim. Ditched by his fellow aliens. Nearly sexually assaulted by a space zombie. Hit by a car, assumed to be a raving lunatic, and committed to an asylum. And all he wants is to be rich and famous like the others. I don't know. I can't really stand any of them, especially Desmond who can be best described as Cousin Eddie from NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION (if he were a British alien). Because the movie never wrangles my interest, it's quick and easy to forget. It's been less than 24 hours since I last watched it and it's already fading from my memory like I failed to get it's parents to make out at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.
Final nail in the coffin: if you make it all the way to the end of the movie, the credits play out over an 80's pop title song written in part by Mel Smith and performed by the Morons themselves. So have fun with that.
The movie aspires to be a spoof of popular science fiction titles with nods to ALIEN, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. But spoofs are funny so I refuse to acknowledge this as one. My disgust stems from the fact that the movie tries so hard to be zany. I hate failed zaniness. We're talking gags like Bernard's conversation with a roadside trashcan he believes to be a dominant life form. Or his fumbling to scratch his nose through his space helmet before a sneeze covers his faceplate in a violent blast of snot. It always takes the easy route, opting for lamest of slapstick humor or the corniest dialogue. The writing, from co-writers Smith and Jones, is atrocious. The aliens come a planet known as Blob. Desmond proudly shows off a piece of alien technology: a pen. You get it everyone? They're morons! It's a joke! Seriously though, MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE feels like a movie for children, but kids aren't going to get the references. And what about scenes like the one where Bernard is rescued from his isolation by hitchhiking with an alien who looks like a mummified corpse (one of the few funny moments in the movie)? A mummified corpse who was hoping for "special payment" for the ride until he discovering Bernard is male and ejecting him into space. Dead creepers don't really have a place in a kids' movie. Who is this movie for and why are we supposed to care?
There isn't a single character I care about in this movie. I have no idea who the main character is supposed to be. It might be the three aliens who become a travelling rock band. But they're horrible people, so that can't be right. They're ignorant and selfish. And Sandra's singing, that the aliens' musical career seems contingent on, is ear-splitting. She's horrible but the movie acts as if she's a phenomenal talent and we're expected to go along with it. On the subject of the aliens' musical tour, did anyone else get a Katy Perry Super Bowl halftime show vibe? The aliens dress in colorful costumes and ride out onto the stage in an enormous toy spaceship. Just me? Anyway, no, I didn't care about them. Bernard? Maybe. He's portrayed as a victim. Ditched by his fellow aliens. Nearly sexually assaulted by a space zombie. Hit by a car, assumed to be a raving lunatic, and committed to an asylum. And all he wants is to be rich and famous like the others. I don't know. I can't really stand any of them, especially Desmond who can be best described as Cousin Eddie from NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION (if he were a British alien). Because the movie never wrangles my interest, it's quick and easy to forget. It's been less than 24 hours since I last watched it and it's already fading from my memory like I failed to get it's parents to make out at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.
Final nail in the coffin: if you make it all the way to the end of the movie, the credits play out over an 80's pop title song written in part by Mel Smith and performed by the Morons themselves. So have fun with that.