You can tell they really mean FAMILY film when 10 of the characters are named Pearson. They are Nana Rose, her 2 adult sons Stuart and Nathan, Nathan's wife Nina, their kids Bethany, Tom, and little Hannah, and Nathan's sons Jake and twins Art and Lee. The story is told mainly from the perspective of Tom (Carter Jenkins), a geeky mathlete who, as the story starts out, is regretting his decision to bomb this semester's high-school classes so he can concentrate on trying to be cool (unlike his dad), an uphill battle.
The Pearsons converge on a big old lake house in Creek Landing, Michigan, for a week's relaxation. Bethany (played by Ashley Tisdale, a Buffy lookalike) has a jerkwad, lying older boyfriend, Rick, who shows up for a little moonlightin'. Tom sees thru him, but Bethany is smitten.
Then the Zirconians land on the roof. There are 4 of them, they're literally little green men (about knee high), and 3 of them are mean. The 4th is the engineer, Sparks. Unlike the others, he has 4 arms (a possible hat-tip to his counterparts in Niven and Pournelle's A Mote in God's Eye), and he's gentle, constructive, and nice, but browbeaten. The alien commander starts off by giving Rick and Tom their options — "eternal enslavement or instantaneous death" — and when Rick gives them more of his customary smartass backtalk they zap him in the back of the neck with a zombifier that gives them remote control over his actions. They also shoot Jake with one, but it doesn't work on him. Turns out that it ONLY works on adults.
Which means it's up to the kids to save the world, armed with nothing more than rakes, skateboards, and a paintball gun. And they can't tell their parents what's going on, or else the parents will try to step in, get zombified, and the conquest will be on.
Sounds incredibly hokey, doesn't it? Well, it is, really, but as inconsequential pieces of fluff go, this one was lots of fun. I can't in good conscience say it's a movie that all SF&F fans owe it to themselves to see, but it's at the top of my up-to-you range (4-6).
The dialog is fairly witty but believable in context, the little girl is a sweetie, the cousins all pull together as a team, the twins (both inveterate video gamers) have a blast with Rick when the controller falls into their hands, and Doris Roberts makes one hell of an impression as Nana when she goes into kung-fu mode.
Kids will love it (not at all scary, Roadrunner-level pratfalls), and adults will like it. Hey, it's almost August. You'll have forgotten it by September, but what the heck, what did you want, Schindler's List?
The Pearsons converge on a big old lake house in Creek Landing, Michigan, for a week's relaxation. Bethany (played by Ashley Tisdale, a Buffy lookalike) has a jerkwad, lying older boyfriend, Rick, who shows up for a little moonlightin'. Tom sees thru him, but Bethany is smitten.
Then the Zirconians land on the roof. There are 4 of them, they're literally little green men (about knee high), and 3 of them are mean. The 4th is the engineer, Sparks. Unlike the others, he has 4 arms (a possible hat-tip to his counterparts in Niven and Pournelle's A Mote in God's Eye), and he's gentle, constructive, and nice, but browbeaten. The alien commander starts off by giving Rick and Tom their options — "eternal enslavement or instantaneous death" — and when Rick gives them more of his customary smartass backtalk they zap him in the back of the neck with a zombifier that gives them remote control over his actions. They also shoot Jake with one, but it doesn't work on him. Turns out that it ONLY works on adults.
Which means it's up to the kids to save the world, armed with nothing more than rakes, skateboards, and a paintball gun. And they can't tell their parents what's going on, or else the parents will try to step in, get zombified, and the conquest will be on.
Sounds incredibly hokey, doesn't it? Well, it is, really, but as inconsequential pieces of fluff go, this one was lots of fun. I can't in good conscience say it's a movie that all SF&F fans owe it to themselves to see, but it's at the top of my up-to-you range (4-6).
The dialog is fairly witty but believable in context, the little girl is a sweetie, the cousins all pull together as a team, the twins (both inveterate video gamers) have a blast with Rick when the controller falls into their hands, and Doris Roberts makes one hell of an impression as Nana when she goes into kung-fu mode.
Kids will love it (not at all scary, Roadrunner-level pratfalls), and adults will like it. Hey, it's almost August. You'll have forgotten it by September, but what the heck, what did you want, Schindler's List?