Ebert - A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length

Alien Trespass

(DIRECTED BYR. W. GOODWIN; STARRINGERICMCCORMACK, JENNIBAIRD; 2009)

Alien Trespass is a sincere attempt to make a film that looks like one of those 1950s B movies where a monster from outer space terrorized a small town, which was almost always in the desert. Small, to save on extras and travel. In the desert, because if you headed east from Hollywood thats where you were, and if you headed west you were making a pirate picture.

The movie is in color, which in the 1950s was uncommon, but otherwise its a knowing replication of the look and feel of those pictures, about things with jaws, tentacles, claws, weapons that shot sparks, and eyes that shot laser beams at people, only they werent known as laser beams but as Deadly Rays. Facing them are plucky locals, dressed in work clothes from Sears, standing behind their open car doors and looking up to watch awkward special effects that are comingcoming!this way!

The movie doesnt bend over backward to be bad. It tries to be the best bad movie that it can be. A lot of its deliberate badness involves effects some viewers might not notice. For example: bad back projection in shots looking back from the dashboard at people in the front seat. In the 1950s, before CGI, the car never left the sound stage, and in the rear window they projected footage of what it was allegedly driving past. Since people were presumed not to study the rear window intently, they got away with murder. In Casablanca, Rick and Ilsa drove from the Champs-Elyses to the countryside instantly.

The plot: Astronomer Ted Lewis (Eric McCormack) and his sexpot wife, Lana (Jody Thompson), are grilling cow-sized steaks in the backyard when something shoots overhead and crashes in the mountains. The sexpot wife is an accurate touch: The monster genre cast pinups like Mamie Van Doren and Cleo Moore, who were featured on the posters with Deadly Rays shooting down their cleavage.

Ted goes to investigate. When he returns, his body has been usurped by Urp, an alien. Urp means well. He needs help to track down another alien who arrived on the same flying saucer, named the Ghota, which has one eye, enough to qualify it as a BEM, or a Bug-Eyed Monster. The Ghota consumes people in order to grow, divide, and conquer. Sort of like B.O.B. in Monsters vs. Aliens, which is also a send-up of 1950s BEM movies. So far, Todd Hayness Far from Heaven (2002) is the only movie ever made in tribute to a great movie of the 1950s.

The Ghota is battled by Urp and his plucky new buddy Tammy (Jenni Baird), a local waitress who is a lot more game than Lana. As nearly as I can recall, in the 1950s good girls were never named Lana and bad ones were never named Tammy. There are also hapless but earnest local cops (Robert Patrick and Dan Lauria) and an assortment of Threatened Townspeople. Also great shots of the Lewis family home, separated from the desert by a white picket fence, surrounded by the age-old story of the shifting, whispering sands.

Alien Trespass, directed by R. W. Goodwin (The X Files on TV) from a screenplay by Steven P. Fisher, is obviously a labor of love. But why? Is there a demand for cheesy 1950s sci-fi movies not met by the existing supply? Will younger audiences consider it to be merely inept, and not inept with an artistic intention? Here is a movie more suited to Comic-Con or the World Science Fiction Convention than to your neighborhood multiplex.

If you must see a science fiction movie about a threat from beyond Earth, theres one right now that I think is great: Knowing. If youre looking for a bad sci-fi movie about a threat, etc., most of the nations critics mistakenly believe it qualifies. How can you lose? From beyond the starsa mysterious force strikes terror into the hearts of men!

All About Steve 1/2

(DIRECTED BYPHILTRAILL; STARRINGSANDRABULLOCK, BRADLEYCOOPER; 2009)

It is not much fun to laugh at a crazy person. None, I would say. Sandra Bullock plays a character who is bonkers in All About Steve, which is billed as a comedy but more resembles a perplexing public display of irrational behavior. Seeing her run around as a basket case makes you appreciate Lucille Ball, who could play a dizzy dame and make you like her. Overacting is risky even in a screwball comedy. Perhaps especially.

Bullock plays Mary Horowitz, a crossword puzzle constructor who knows a vast number of words and how theyre spelled, but not much about how they might enlighten her. Because her apartment has to be fumigated, she moves back home with her parents. The headline here is how she earned enough to move out in the first place. I may be mistaken, but I think of crossword puzzle construction as more of a second job for smart people.

Anyway, Mary is fortyish and still single, perhaps in part because she wears extraordinarily clumpy shiny red disco boots everywhere, all the timeeven on a 5K charity hike, I can only assume. Her parents arrange a blind date with Steve (Bradley Cooper of The Hangover), a television cameraman for a cable news network. The network must not be as big as CNN because theres only evidence of one crew: Steve and his on-air talent Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church).

Mary lays her eyes on Steve and wants to lay everything else. This isnt love at first sight; its erotomania. On their first date, she gives his tonsils a tongue massage. Soon hes fleeing from sightings of her, and shes in hot pursuit. Her desperation extends to a scene where she runs in her disco boots beside the TV news van, breathlessly small-talking to Steve through the window. If Steve had mercy, he would stop or speed upanything would be better than playing her along.

The crew is assigned to the site of a big breaking story. A group of small deaf children has fallen into a well. Why deaf? Diversity in casting, I guess. Its not like they have to do anything other than be rescued. Mary pursues them to the accident scene, and in a shot destined to go viral on YouTube, she runs across the field behind Steve, waving wildly, and falls into the hole herself.

You see what I mean. The point comes when were rolling our eyes right along with Mary. But dont get me wrong. I am fond of Sandra Bullock. Ive given her some good reviews, as recently as this summer (The Proposal). But how does she choose her material? If she does it herself, she needs an agent. If its done by an agent, she needs to do it herself. The screenplay by Kim Barker requires her to behave in an essentially disturbing way that began to wear on me. It begins as merely peculiar, moves on to miscalculation, and becomes seriously annoying. One of its most unfortunate elements is seeing Bullock so stranded and helpless in a would-be comic frenzy. An actress should never, ever be asked to run beside a van in red disco boots for more than about half a block, and then only if her child is being kidnapped.