Metacritic reviews

The movie is awfully close to a video game with its own specific rules, but its characters are appealing and funny, "Aliens" doesn't have a mechanical feel that drags down most video-game movies.

Perfectly calibrated for the pre-adolescent set, highlighting broad physical comedy and themes of kid empowerment and featuring one of the stars from "High School Musical."

A pointless but ultimately harmless family adventure that doesn't mentally assault the 12-and-over set. (Extra points for being 100 percent fart-joke-free).

Performances are unremarkable but acceptable pretty much across the board, and the vocal talents -- particularly Thomas Haden Church as the belligerent Tazer and Josh Peck as the lovable Sparks -- are well cast.

Like those mild old Disney comedies of the ’60s and ’70s, it seems perfectly content with being a harmless distraction.

Robert Hoffman as the boyfriend, who spends most of his time under the marionettelike control of either the aliens or the human children, provides the film's occasional funny moments.

Aliens in the Attic is conveyor-belt family product, an action/adventure/sci-fi/comedy made from the bland corporate DNA of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. It appears designed for families who never leave the mall.

The real problem with this Aliens encounter is that it's patently a Nick at Night midweek movie that inadvertently got greenlighted for a big-screen opening.

Cheap, shoddy, crass and depressing fun for the whole family -- by which I mean 8-year-old boys.

Nowhere near as bad as "Coneheads," but still isn't worth your time.