Fine Tuning

A really poorly executed version of E.T. and Close Encounters. High school kids soup up a TV antennae and find aliens obsessed with 1950's TV comedy shows. That's it. The aliens harmlessly come to Earth and the high school boys show them around Hollywood. Fifteen minutes of goofiness while the aliens seek out Milton Berle, etc. It's done the way that Spielberg has of trying to push your buttons, this time with cuteness and warmth. Sometimes in his career he does it, but wow, this one is such a blunder. Dunderheaded, chortling oh-so-cute aliens (dwarfs in costumes like ET- potatoes with rubber-nose-mustache-glasses on). I guess that's how Spielberg made his career, by using the main tropes of science fiction and freshening them up a bit, but sometimes, like here, it seems he thinks that all he has to do is just use them and the magic will work. I did love the old Vaudevillians. They're great. You get about two minutes of those guys around the twenty minute mark. Otherwise it is super bad. Sloppy.