Review of My Stepmother Is an Alien

I'm not much for the 80's. I was too young to remember them(was 4 when they ended), and listening to the music, looking at the hairstyles and watching the movies... it's just not the same. This particular brand of 80's comedy hits a particularly bad note with me; the fish-out-of-the-water, combined with ridiculous sci-fi and with many of the jokes heavily, pitifully overdone. As such, this movie is hard for me to objectively review... so you will have to forgive me if this turns a tad too cruel. Having seen this at least once before, a few years ago, I mainly watched this to see the popular teen actors at a younger age... Lewis, Hannigan and Green. It was quite amusing to see them so young, and I don't regret investing a hundred minutes of half-attentive time on it... again. The film itself is OK... the plot is about as far out as they go, but I guess it's somewhat original and surely an interesting idea. The pacing seems mostly off, and you're often pondering when a scene will move on. This may be that I'm used to newer, more fast-paced movies... but I have few(if any) problems with Hitchcock's films, even his oldest... so I suspect that it's the direction rather than my attention span. The humor is mostly poor, or at least overdone. The gags are maybe funny at first, but when you get down to it, it's basically one joke told over and over, and it's just not that funny or original. The acting seems somewhat shoddy, as well. The characters are mostly one-note jokes, walking clichés, stereotypes, whichever expression you prefer. All in all, this is a fair comedy, considering the time it was made, but it's not really worth watching unless you're a big fan of some of the actors. I recommend this only to very big fans of several of the people involved in making it. 5/10