FILM REVIEW: Aliens In The Attic
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Director: John Schultz Cast: Carter Jenkins, Ashley Tisdale, Austin Butler Rating: “What the heck is that?” Never does Aliens In The Attic feel more like a movie aimed at kids than on the numerous occasions when “heck” is substituted for “hell”. You can almost feel the actors – many of them kids themselves – stumbling over the word, knowing they should be saying something else, trying desperately to sell a phrase that died out in 1954. Sadly, they don’t. The good news is that this is only a small worry in an otherwise mildly entertaining (if rather ordinary) action romp in which a group of kids find the advance team of an alien attack force in their attic. Naturally they can’t tell their parents – who are, in the best tradition of Hollywood movie parents, nice, aloof and useless – and so the sprogs decide to fight off the interstellar critters themselves. As you do. The aliens are computer-generated, icky to look at and voiced so melodramatically they grate (even when they say “Puny humans!”, which should never not be funny). But surprisingly, the kids aren’t that bad: wee little Ashley Boettcher has the biggest Bambi-eyes in the world, lead Carter Jenkins is a likeable Yank version of Merlin’s Colin Morgan and High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale will keep that particular crowd of fans happy - even wearing a bikini so the male sections are even happier. And apparently for no reason other than that, either. True, there’s nothing really new here: it’s all sub-Home Alone nonsense, but the slapstick’s effective and it’s superbly paced. Special praise must also go to Robert Hoffman, who gets to ham it up while under alien mind-control like a Jim Carrey for the next generation. No, seriously, that’s not quite as bad as it sounds… Jayne Nelson |
