Aliens in the Attic might have amounted to something delightfully nightmarish in the hands of a writer/director willing to explore the dark shadows in every corner.
One can’t help hoping that someday a filmmaker with the mean-spirited glee of a Tim Burton or a Joe Dante (it's obvious that this film anxiously wants to be his Gremlins and/or Small Soldiers) will take hold of the concept and really run with it. As it stands, Aliens in the Attic is a cool idea that has been watered down for under-10s.
A quick glimpse at the resume of director John Schultz should have been enough to convince the team of producers that he was a longshot to capture the film’s darker, more engaging elements: his lead actors to date have been Melissa Joan Hart (Drive Me Crazy, 1999), L’il Bow Wow (Like Mike, 2002) and Cedric The Entertainer (the execrable remake of The Honeymooners, 2005). When the script offers father/teenage-son conflict, cousin-vs-cousin stare-offs, mean-boyfriend moments, and an advance party of earth-invading aliens occupying the upstairs storey of your holiday house – well, the film should have least been entertaining... but it isn’t.
Tom Pearson (Hayden Christensen-lookalike Carter Jenkins) is a nerd, who is so uncomfortable with his own intelligence and the divide it has created amongst his friends that he throws his exams. The act causes a new level of angst between he and his Dad (ex-SNL star Kevin Nealon), worsened by his quickly-maturing, smart-mouth sister Bethany (High School Musical’s Ashley Tisdale). All three hope that a summer in a rented holiday home will help them come to terms with the hassles of teen life.
When they are joined by Uncle Nathan (played by new Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien’s voiceover guy, Andy Richter) and Nana Rose (Everybody Loves Raymond matriarch Doris Roberts), Tom must endure a house full of horrible cousins (led by jock-stereotype Austin Butler) and Bethany’s obnoxious college-age boyfriend Ricky (an up-for-it Robert Hoffman).
In next-to-no time the pot stirs further with the arrival of four military-trained, pint-sized location scouts from the planet Zirconia, whose arrival sets in motion an utterly predictable and amateur succession of slapstick confrontations. One sickeningly-adorable alien, nicknamed 'Sparks’, swaps sides to help the sweet hu-Mans fight his fellow Zirconians, diluting the message of loyalty the film tries to espouse.
Schultz borrows a lot of moments (though not nearly enough) from far better films – the aforementioned Gremlins and Small Soldiers, some E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, a little of Men In Black, a lot of The Goonies; even some Matrix-style wire-action in a mildly-amusing confrontation between Nana and Ricky. Though it offers nothing new, Aliens in the Attic doesn’t even manage to entice as homage to the best of the genre. The whole enterprise is frustratingly 'blah’ – weak acting, flat storytelling, lifeless direction, murky cinematography. Worst of all, the shoddiest of special effects – betraying some serious budget restrictions, the four aliens are unforgivably unbelievable. If I didn’t have back hair and a hangover to convince me otherwise, Aliens In The Attic’s effects would have convinced me it was still 1985.
There are just too many other better options for the family audience today. Aliens in the Attic may pull some indiscriminating viewers on a rainy weekend afternoon for the next few weeks but its rightful home is amongst the weekly rentals at your local home video store. Wait a month and that’s where you’ll find it.
