BEFORE: So what DID happen to those senior citizens who got sucked into space?
THE PLOT: The old age pensioners that left at the end of the first film come back to earth to visit their relatives...
AFTER: The oldsters come back from space, but without the benefit of director Ron Howard, or Brian Dennehey's alien operations manager (except for in a brief cameo at the end) - that should be a couple of big warning signs that this sequel was pretty darn unnecessary. I mean, why unravel the ending of the first film, just to stretch out the drama of getting older? If the alien planet was such a fantastic paradise, where no one ever gets sick or dies, why come back and jeopardize all that? For all they know, they're all going to drop dead as soon as they set foot back on Earth...
Hmmm, live forever, or see the grandchildren one more time? Sorry, kid, it was nice knowing ya....what's that? They actually WANT to come back to Earth, grow old, get sick and die? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense...
Meanwhile, Steve Guttenberg's still a two-bit boat captain and tour guide - even though he should have been brought up on mass-murder charges after a boatload of his elderly passengers was (officially) lost at sea...or at least 30 charges of criminal neglect - so really, five years later, he should still be in jail, serving consecutive terms.
Without Dennehy to interact with the hu-mans, the responsibility falls on Tahnee Welch, who's got an odd accent and can't deliver a line of dialogue with any believability at all. The accent may enhance her role as an alien, but the second part, not so much. There's a reason why you haven't seen her in any film since, well, this one.
This time, the aliens have come back to rescue their lost cocooned comrades, after failing to do so in the first film - funny how they could transport 30 senior citizens to their home planet, but not 10 small pods... Plus, if they always need humans to help them with the heavy lifting, just how advanced a civilization are they, anyway?
When one of the pods gets found by an oceanographic institute, they need to hatch a plan to rescue the alien before it dies. But they have 4 days to plan a last-minute rescue - that's 3 1/2 days of planning, and one frantic evening of rescue. There's no back-up plan in case something goes wrong, so either these aliens are very poor planners, or just have a flair for the dramatic. But since the alien is in failing health, wouldn't it make more sense to rescue him AS SOON AS POSSIBLE?
In the end, all of the old folks need to make decisions about whether to stay on Earth or go back into space - weighing all the factors like their health, families, jobs, etc. etc. - life goes on, I guess...um, until it doesn't.
Also starring Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Maureen Stapleton, Jack Gilford (all reprising their roles from the first film) - plus Courteney Cox and Elaine Stritch.
RATING: 3 out of 10 cheap souvenirs
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