For Bob, it was a day like any other in a cheesy minimal effort E.T. the Extraterrestrial wannabe life. Rush through breakfast so he could make the baseball game where he’d be rightfully bullied for his utter failure to hit a fastball, hit the airboat races with his family to watch his dad bring home a sweet $5000 prize and then see one of his father’s competitors get in his face about it. Later on a gator attacked their airboat, knocking dad overboard, causing Bob to lose consciousness and end up kidnapped by a UFO piloted by a talking robot with giant human-like eyes! Damn little dude, I bet you wish hadn’t been so hellbent on hurrying through your breakfast now! Continue reading “Navigators of the Space (1993)”
Category: Kids
Nukie (1987)
For much of Nukie, a tale of a pair of extraterrestrial brothers separated and stranded on Earth, I was convinced what I was seeing was the culmination of days, if not just hours, of work by people who themselves had just landed from another world and had never seen a movie in their life.
While it clearly, desperately wanted to rip off E.T. the Extraterrestrial (there’s a little ugly brown alien with giant eyes just like E.T., but even better, there are two of them!), the film’s seemingly random melange of characters and storylines (there’s a witch doctor who wants to kill the village twins, a nun who simultaneously tries to civilize the natives while complaining to a NASA doctor about the dangers of bringing the modern world to the village, a computer AI who develops a heart with feelings and a NASA administrator who wants to be a clown) will leave the unsuspecting viewer feeling like she was exposed to some alien brain devouring microbe. (Did Nukie just accidentally cause an earthquake because he wished the earth would devour him and somehow it did so that when he wakes up and busts out of the ground everything in the village is trashed? Or did I somehow get trashed and just didn’t know it?) Continue reading “Nukie (1987)”
Witches in Stitches (1997)
On those crybaby lists of occupations that supposedly are the most stressful, there is one significant omission that makes you question whether the pilots, reporters and taxi cab drivers just happen to have great PR working on the authors of these click bait articles. I can’t think of any other reason to be explain the absence of one of the least appreciated, most dangerous avocations to ever strap on a pointy hat and mount a broom – witches! Continue reading “Witches in Stitches (1997)”
Witch’s Night Out (1978)
It’s the Halloween that almost wasn’t for Crybaby Town! Everyone has lost that spooky spirit, from the kids to the town elders all the way down to the local haunted house where the town’s resident witch lives out her days, remembering how great she used to have it, a veritable Norma Desmond, but with a mole and magic wand instead of houseguest William Holden. Continue reading “Witch’s Night Out (1978)”
The Berenstain Bears’ Easter Surprise (1981)
Leave it to the Berenstain Bears to take a grizzly-sized dump all over our most holy of holidays. It isn’t bad enough that they make only the vaguest, most passing of references to the religious aspect of Easter, mentioning something about spring being a time for miracles, but then they have to slander the Easter Bunny, turning him into a disgruntled boss, ranting about all the benefits his employees want! And what kid doesn’t want to watch a holiday special with a constipated-looking rabbit singing “Who Cares About Easter”? Continue reading “The Berenstain Bears’ Easter Surprise (1981)”
The Berenstain Bears’ Comic Valentine (1982)
Bear Country Cousins versus the Beartown Bullies for all the marbles! Hot shot local talent and slap shot sexpot Brother Bear leads his team against the heavily favored big city goons (they all have a missing front tooth so they must be goons, right?) anchored by the hulking boogeyman of a goalie whose surely hideous visage is hidden beneath a fearsome hockey mask! The stage is set for a polar vortex Valentine’s Day Massacre! Continue reading “The Berenstain Bears’ Comic Valentine (1982)”
The Little Drummer Boy Book II (1976)
The first time was for his Messiah! Now Aaron, the Little Drummer Boy with the biggest skills on the skins, takes on a mission that leaves him stripped of everything that matters to him, facing down an evil empire and spearheading the invasion to make everything right on behalf of one of the Three Wise Men!
The silver bells that were made to announce the birth of Jesus must be recovered at all costs! (See how easy we have it now when Simeon the bell maker could just announce it on social media instead of making a racket with his gigantic bells?) Continue reading “The Little Drummer Boy Book II (1976)”