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Review by Susan Granger
½ star out of 4
It's hard to believe that the big-screen version of the
ingratiating CBS-TV sitcom of the early '60s could be this awful!
Christopher Lloyd seems geniunely embarrassed as a stranded space
alien who meets Earthling Jeff Daniels when his UFO crashes, and
Jeff's a mild-mannered TV news producer investigating the
phenomenon. (Bill Bixby played the role originally.) Lloyd stows away
in the trunk of Daniels' car and moves into his home, posing as his
Uncle Martin, wreaking havoc until, allegedly, his superiority complex
and wacky charm prevail. Don't believe it! This is no "Addams Family"
or "Brady Bunch." Screenwriters Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver
("Casper") concocted the wretched screenplay filled with banal
one-liners and an ending unabashedly lifted from "E.T." - and the mess
is ineptly directed by Donald Petrie ("Grumpy Old Men") who must have
encouraged the over-acting. A bizarre casting note: Darryl Hannah
plays a supposedly homely camerawoman who reads "Men are from Mars"
and is secretly in love with Daniels who, predictably, pants for
Elizabeth Hurley, his airhead co-producer. Wallace Shawn is a silly,
villainous scientist who conspires with a secretive government
operative, Ray Walston (TV's original Uncle Martin), to capture the
emerald-green Martian to perform some gruesome experiments on him,
probing his retractable antennas and analyzing his ability to levitate
things by pointing his finger. And the Martian's spacesuit, named
Zoot, is an over-sexed animated character, voiced by unbilled Wayne
Knight. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "My Favorite Martian"
is a lamebrained 2. It's cheesy, creepy, and sleazy or were those
three Disney dwarfs?
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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