The original title for Aliens in the Attic was "They Came From Upstairs" - a much better title, you must agree. Still, I can understand the change. Everything else about the movie is generic, bland, and unmemorable. The title was the last part of the movie to have any ounce of inspiration sucked from it.
What we have here is a children's movie that should have been fun and mischievous, but is instead overly safe and tedious. It doesn't even bother to give us any real characters. The kids who act as the heroes are dull, the adult actors may as well not even be there, and exist mainly to pop up every now and then to say, "What are those kids up to now?", and the aliens are even more boring than the adults. Shame about the aliens. They kind of look like Yoda's angrier and shorter half-cousins, but they hold absolutely no personality. I remember they had names, but darned if I can remember what they were. The aliens themselves are a ragtag group that are pretty much interchangeable. There's a girl one (voice by Kari Wahlgren), one who turns out to be nice and helps out the kids (Josh Peck), and two whom the movie didn't even bother to give personalities or real dialogue to, so naturally they are played by the best actors in the cast (Thomas Hayden-Church and J.K. Simmons).
Why are the aliens here on Earth? From what little the movie tells us, it has something to do with an invasion campaign. The little creatures arrive at the vacation home of the Pearson family, who are having a sort of family reunion for the weekend. There's apparently a device the aliens want hidden under the basement of the house. The Pearson kids learn about their presence soon enough, but the adults remain completely oblivious throughout. The six kids who act as the heroes basically act as one giant unit, and have very little individual personalities. The leader of the kids (Carter Jenkins) is flunking school, much to the shame of his clueless parents (Kevin Nealon and Gillian Vigman), and his sister (Ashley Tisdale) is dating an older guy who's a jerk (Robert Hoffman). Speaking of the jerk boyfriend, he becomes the victim of the alien's mind control gun, which turns him into a zombie that can be controlled with a device. Fortunately, said device looks and works like a video game controller, so when the kids get their hands on it, they can control him easily enough. The kids' grandmother (Doris Roberts) also falls under alien control, leading to a scene where the boyfriend and the grandma have an elaborate kung-fu fight, with the kids controlling granny, and the aliens controlling the jerk. This scene should be fun, but it's really very boring.
So is the rest of the movie. Aliens in the Attic is cinematic junk food for kids that doesn't even have the decency to go down easy enough for accompanying adults. No one seems to be that involved, not even the kids themselves. They're going through the motions as much as the adult actors are, almost as if they're already planning to wipe this movie from their screen credits before they hit 17. It's bad enough seeing people like Andy Richter and Tim Meadows cashing paychecks in the worthless adult roles this movie gives them. I found myself wondering what was going through the minds of the filmmakers. Did director John Schultz think kids wouldn't care, as long as there were cute CG aliens added in later? Speaking of the CG, not even that impresses. Not only have they been given no personality by the credited writers, but they're boring to look at. They don't even get any real one-liners. I have to question if anyone even cared about this movie.
The premise for this movie calls out for a director like Joe Dante (Gremlins), someone who knows how to mix fun with creature terror. Instead, we've been given a toothless commercial product that will probably fade from theaters long before August ends, and sit forgotten in the back corners of video store shelves the world over. Kids deserve more and better.
What we have here is a children's movie that should have been fun and mischievous, but is instead overly safe and tedious. It doesn't even bother to give us any real characters. The kids who act as the heroes are dull, the adult actors may as well not even be there, and exist mainly to pop up every now and then to say, "What are those kids up to now?", and the aliens are even more boring than the adults. Shame about the aliens. They kind of look like Yoda's angrier and shorter half-cousins, but they hold absolutely no personality. I remember they had names, but darned if I can remember what they were. The aliens themselves are a ragtag group that are pretty much interchangeable. There's a girl one (voice by Kari Wahlgren), one who turns out to be nice and helps out the kids (Josh Peck), and two whom the movie didn't even bother to give personalities or real dialogue to, so naturally they are played by the best actors in the cast (Thomas Hayden-Church and J.K. Simmons).
Why are the aliens here on Earth? From what little the movie tells us, it has something to do with an invasion campaign. The little creatures arrive at the vacation home of the Pearson family, who are having a sort of family reunion for the weekend. There's apparently a device the aliens want hidden under the basement of the house. The Pearson kids learn about their presence soon enough, but the adults remain completely oblivious throughout. The six kids who act as the heroes basically act as one giant unit, and have very little individual personalities. The leader of the kids (Carter Jenkins) is flunking school, much to the shame of his clueless parents (Kevin Nealon and Gillian Vigman), and his sister (Ashley Tisdale) is dating an older guy who's a jerk (Robert Hoffman). Speaking of the jerk boyfriend, he becomes the victim of the alien's mind control gun, which turns him into a zombie that can be controlled with a device. Fortunately, said device looks and works like a video game controller, so when the kids get their hands on it, they can control him easily enough. The kids' grandmother (Doris Roberts) also falls under alien control, leading to a scene where the boyfriend and the grandma have an elaborate kung-fu fight, with the kids controlling granny, and the aliens controlling the jerk. This scene should be fun, but it's really very boring.
So is the rest of the movie. Aliens in the Attic is cinematic junk food for kids that doesn't even have the decency to go down easy enough for accompanying adults. No one seems to be that involved, not even the kids themselves. They're going through the motions as much as the adult actors are, almost as if they're already planning to wipe this movie from their screen credits before they hit 17. It's bad enough seeing people like Andy Richter and Tim Meadows cashing paychecks in the worthless adult roles this movie gives them. I found myself wondering what was going through the minds of the filmmakers. Did director John Schultz think kids wouldn't care, as long as there were cute CG aliens added in later? Speaking of the CG, not even that impresses. Not only have they been given no personality by the credited writers, but they're boring to look at. They don't even get any real one-liners. I have to question if anyone even cared about this movie.
The premise for this movie calls out for a director like Joe Dante (Gremlins), someone who knows how to mix fun with creature terror. Instead, we've been given a toothless commercial product that will probably fade from theaters long before August ends, and sit forgotten in the back corners of video store shelves the world over. Kids deserve more and better.