BEFORE: This may seem a bit out of place, because I just did eight animated films in a row two weeks back, but this one didn't connect well enough with the others. Rihanna did a voice in "Smurfs", but I need two connections in order to make the linking work. So I tabled this one, knowing that I probably had some Jennifer Lopez films coming up and I could just sandwich it between two of those. Still, I had to watch this out of sequence because I got the alert from Netflix that the film was about to disappear and no longer be available. It's on Peacock now, but at the time I had no guarantee it would be available anywhere when I needed to review it. So there you go. I'm sticking it here, today, because I fell behind again and I want to catch up. We had this bad storm coming toward New York and I was on flood watch for a while - but then the storm didn't seem as bad as it could have been, like there might be some rain but it's going to be spread out over three days. So then I could relax and have a couple Friday beer floats, but then it's a bit hard to focus on a movie after that. I'll be back on track and back in the pattern tomorrow.
Jennifer Lopez carries over from "An Unfinished Life".
THE PLOT: Oh, a lovable misfit alien, runs away from his planet and takes shelter on Earth, where he befriends Tip, and adventurous young girl who suddenly on a quest to find her displaced mother, Lucy.
AFTER: This is just the fourth "alien invasion" film of this year, the others were "Jules", "Prey" and "The Day the Earth Blew Up". They're a bit all over the place, because as a species we're not sure yet what that first initial encounter with aliens will be like, because it hasn't happened yet, will it be more like "Close Encounters" or more like "Independence Day"? Will the aliens be here for a friendly visit, are they going to invite us to join the Federation, or do they just need our water or our food? What's odd is that in two out of this year's four alien movies, it starts out looking like an invasion but really, they're here to protect us from a bigger threat. That's the big plot twist that every film needs, right there.
Here the Boov, a whole species of color-changing, backwards-talking aliens relocates all of the humans to the Australian Outback, in alien facilities that look a lot like gated communities. It's an enormous task that gets handled practically overnight, and then the Boov move into all the empty homes and apartments, though they don't know what any of our human devices are for, because they regard humans as very simple and backwards. One of them, Oh, is very excited to be colonizing a new planet and he invites aliens to a house-warming party, only everyone finds him rather annoying so nobody shows up. Meanwhile, a pre-teen named Gratuity ("Tip" for short) who managed to escape the relocation beams is determined to avoid the aliens and also rescue her mother from them.
One small problem, when inviting all of the other Boov to his party, Oh sent the invitation out to every alien in the whole galaxy - it's the equivalent of hitting "reply all", I guess, and now he's accidentally revealed his race's new location to the Gorg, which is a much more brutal race of aliens that displaced the Boov from their home planet to begin with. Oh is declared to be in violation of Boov rules and becomes a wanted criminal, so he runs away and hooks up with Tip, and they form an uneasy alliance to head to Paris to cancel that e-mail, then find Tip's mother by using a flying car created with alien technology and a convenience store "slushy" machine.
Long story short, they do manage to cancel that e-mail, however the Gorg drones are already here, and they shoot down the Slushy car before it can get to Australia. Thankfully the car can be repaired with a "superchip" from one of the drones. Eventually they do reach the relocation camp, but by this point the Gorg are attacking and the Boov are once more evacuating - they must do a lot of that, because they're really good at it. Oh has to make a decision, to stay on Earth or beam aboard the Boov ship - during the evacuation he realizes that the Boov leader, Smek, has exactly the thing that the Gorg are looking for, and since he's the only Boov with any bravery, he becomes the new leader and decides to give back the thing to the Gorg, risking his life to do so.
Again, this is two films in the same month where the invading aliens are NOT the big threat they appear to be, and so really the most important question to ask if aliens ever DO come to Earth would probably be, "Umm, why are you here?" I mean, trust them, but also make sure they don't have a human cookbook on their shelf. And as I've said before, if they're just looking for a few humans to go live in their alien zoo as part of an exhibit, I might be down for volunteering. They'd have to feed me, right? Being observed by aliens all the time might be a small price to pay for free food and housing and the chance to travel...
Directed by Tim Johnson (director of "Over the Hedge")
Also starring the voices of Jim Parsons (last seen in "Dear Mr. Watterson"), Rihanna (last heard in "Smurfs"), Steve Martin (last seen in "Marty, Life Is Short"), Matt Jones (last seen in "Cooties"), Brian Stepanek (last seen in "Pain & Gain"), April Lawrence (last heard in "Over the Hedge"), Stephen Kearin (last seen in "Then Came You"), Lisa Stewart, April Winchell (last heard in "Tarzan & Jane"), Bronson Lassetter, Tara Sands, Catherine Taber (last seen in "Just Like Heaven")
RATING: 5 out of 10 colors that the Boov change to, based on their moods
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