Monday, December 5, 2016

Morons from Outer Space - 1985

Sci Fi boxset, you let me down.  You let me down twice.  See the upcoming review of Galaxina. Morons from Outer Space was just about the lamest thing I could've imagined, and I'm a pretty imaginative person.  This is a British "comedy" about aliens that come to Earth and the fallout thereafter.

I guess British style humor is hit and miss for a lot of people.  People can laugh out loud at a series like The Office (the original one of course), which has no "punch lines" but rather just awkward people acting awkwardly.  Then you have something like Monty Python, going into serious reaches to be absurd and ridiculous, and that's funny too.  I myself like Monty Python, I like Ali G, and I don't particularly like Red Dwarf.  I liked Death at a Funeral, and I didn't like Bean.  I could go on with examples but I won't.

I couldn't really tell why Morons would've been funny.  Okay, the idea is good and it makes fun of the premise of a lot of other science fiction movie canon.  Aliens land on Earth.  They looks pretty much exactly like humans.  Despite the fact they don't have any special powers or abilities, they are immediately treated like celebrities.  I did like that they were mocking the celebrity obsessed culture that loves these people regardless of their actual abilities.

Three of the aliens are being thrown into the lime light, while a fourth alien that got separated has to work his way alone through England.  I guess the jokes come from the difficult situations that the fourth alien, Bernard, experiences in England, such as being committed to a mental hospital.

The movie was graciously short, an hour and twenty minutes long, but nothing really happened in it.  If your 80 minute movie feels like it's overly long, you might've done something wrong.  Still, it was decently budgeted, so the looks are there.  The premise is sound and it's easy to follow.  But the jokes aren't really there, and the movie just tends to be one you stare at blankly while wondering how much of it is left.  I started this about 5 times, never getting far.  I finally watched it all last night, and I don't feel any more like I enjoyed it than all those times I turned it off.

One star is too many, so half a star.



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