Mac and Me

Mac and Me is one of those few movies that truly fly below the radar of most peoples' memories. I'm thinking that this is selective memory, because this movie makes such a crappy impression that it's hard to forget. This movie's first strike is that it's a blatant rip-off of E.T, and they couldn't even wait till the next decade to try and capitalize on it. E.T. at least was a good movie that kids and adults alike could enjoy, if for different reasons. Mac and Me is clearly aimed at kids, but it falls woefully short by virtue of the fact that it's no fun for kids and the aliens are very disturbing in appearance. There are no jokes or scenarios that adults (or kids for that matter) would find funny. As noted by other reviewers, there are numerous product placements made in such an obvious way that it's laughable any ad exec would want to take part. In fact, most people that do remember this film remember most vividly the McDonald's break-dance scene. A pack of perfectly choreographed kids manage to fend off government thugs trying to get "Mac" by busting into an 80's break dance. In McDonalds. What? The most irritating part is the alien family. They live on some moon that US spacecrafts can visit and return to earth from (this is set in the present day of 1988, mind you). They drink a dark liquid (Coke, evidently) out of the ground. Throughout the film, they never show any sign of thought above the level of sea slug, they just mope around looking dumb, drunk, and without genitals. They waddle when they walk. They have some sort of mystical power by which they can resurrect the dead (huh?). Then, at the end of the movie, when you think that surely they go away, NO, they are naturalized as US citizens and given driver's licenses so they can drive a pink Cadillac convertible around. The government thugs have reversed the short-sightedness of their plan to study the aliens, and decide that they will allow space aliens to live among us, so long as they wear clothes from now on. This movie is just so random. Thank god they never made a sequel to this (it appears that they wanted to - "We'll be back!") and thank God that this movie will sink to the bowels of society's collective consciousness. What makes this movie so bad is that it almost defies logic that such a bad film of total incoherence would come from a big budget release and a reputable studio.

Yes, that's right, this great movie has lots of hidden messages. Like when little Mac's parents are calling to him from their desert planet (I think it's the same one as in Star Wars), if you play it backwards they are reading satanic messages! And then there's the MacDonalds dance with all those sexual innuendos (amazing), and then there's the final becoming an American citizen scene - look at the back and you can see a ghost that was there when they were filming, and they CAUGHT IT ON CAMERA! I heard the little thing that played Mac was killed in a "loaded shot-gun mix-up" incident when they were finishing filming, and for one or two scenes they had to get another thing to play Mac. Well, anyway, it's awful.

A family of hideously homely aliens find themselves stuck on Earth. The family gets separated. One little boy alien named Mac (an acronym for Mysterious Alien Creature) befriends plucky crippled kid Eric (winningly played by real-life disabled kid Jade Calegory). Eric helps Mac get reunited with his family. Co-written and directed with staggering ineptitude by Stewart Raffill, with a syrupy, swelling ersatz John Williams orchestral mush score by Alan Silvestri, plenty of shameless product plugs for the fast food chain McDonald's (Ronald McDonald even makes a highly unwelcome cameo appearance!), a soundtrack full of dreadful power pop ballads, cruddy (far from) special effects, and loads of unintentional belly laughs, this awesomely atrocious abomination rates as a total four-star so-stinky-it's-strangely-sublime schlocky hoot. The cast turn in astoundingly awful performances: Jonathan Ward as Eric's jerky, obnoxious tool of an older brother Michael, Christine Ebersole as Eric's harried mother Janet, Katrina Caspary as hot teenage brunette Courtney, Lauren Stanley as spunky little girl Debbie, and George "Buck" Flower as a bumbling supermarket security guard. The aliens are truly freaky-looking buggers: With their shriveled-up prune faces, big, wide, googly saucer eyes, spindly limbs, bony builds, pot bellies, and wobbly walks, they are more creepy and ugly than cute and cuddly. Gut-busting highlights include Mac being fried by an electric fence, Eric rolling down a cliff and crashing into a lake, Debbie getting strapped to the back of an out of control vacuum cleaner, Eric racing through a street and a shopping center with Mac on his lap, and the jaw-dropping protracted dance party sequence at a McDonald's restaurant with Mac in a teddy bear outfit cutting loose with these pathetic herky-jerky rug-tearin' moves. A gloriously ghastly camp marvel of charmingly horrendous 80's kitsch.

As is to be expected, in the wake of the very successful E.T., some massively derivative imitators were released. In '86 Flight of the Navigator used Paul Reubens' Pee-wee Herman voice as that of an alien ship which befriends a boy who just wants to get home. To be sure that was a smarmy, 2nd-hand effort. But by far, the other much worse product came with 1988's "Mac and Me." This was so much more appalling, that "Navigator" was instantly blown out of everyone's collective memory. Mac and Me is so heinous that it could melt the brains of the unborn. Remarkably, the movie is so burdened by wall-to-wall garbazh, that stealing the entire plot of another movie could be the least of it's problems. An unrelated movie, called "East Side Story," came out in 1997. It's a sort of "That's Entertainment!" of Soviet era propagandistic musical numbers on topics as naff as productivity objectives, living in a workers paradise, ideological purity, etc.. Mmmm... delicious! That's what you get when the machinery of state has no natural competitors. But "Mac and Me" is what capitalism would be bringing you morning, noon and night if powerful fans of ca$h never had their avarice checked by people who know better; critics and people with taste. As one cynical remark goes: If Thomas Edison had an MBA he would have just kept making larger candles. This speed-course in half-assed, capitalist film-making includes, as noted, a plot lifted intact from a more successful movie (Why reinvent the wheel?), takes the form of a 90 minute McDonalds commercial (You want to lose 90 minutes of selling time?), interrupted by Coke commercials, has an alien that looks like a 4 dollar rubber fetus (because it is a 4 dollar rubber fetus), a (sym)pathetic hero in a wheelchair, and a script produced after sniffing the finest glue one could buy at the 99 cent store. Did $omebody $ay MAC-Donald$? Somehow the execs didn't imagine we'd notice the endless shilling, maybe 200 percent more than in a typical movie, while taking their express-elevator ride to profit hell. So let's acknowledge these brave geniuses, who strived to make capitalism safe for uh... more capitalism, by name so they make it into the history books; Producers Mark Damon, William B. Kerr, and R.J. Louis; AND so this review is inescapably linked to their names in internet search results. Of course there are questions that capitalism does't answer. Why do the aliens heads look like human scrotums? Why do they walk like babies with a load in their diapers? Why do they like whistling the first few notes of "Happy Trails (to you)?" This is the lowest point in movie history, in any country, ever. Whoever would try to displace this as the "Worst Movie Ever Made" must first use it as a checklist to make sure their movie fails as spectacularly in as many places.

When a film critic refers to a film as one of the best movies of the year, they have mean a film has enough potential and drive to become THE best film. Few films of 1989 will be able to surpass the magic of Stewart Raffill's "Mac and Me". It is CERTAINLY the best film of the year, and possibly one of the best films of the 80's. It tells a beguiling story of friendship, compassion, and undeniable warmth. What makes "Mac & Me" such a masterpiece is that it is able to (let's face it) rob a previous concept and make a bigger, bolder film out of it. This puts ET to shame. One of the film's best sequences is also its most heartbreaking one. MAC (mysterious alien creature)is found in tears is he mourns his missing family. Moments like this are what makes movies as strong as they are today. The first time I saw "Mac & Me", I expected a sappy over-sentimental film (ala The Right Stuff), but instead, I saw a blazing masterpiece of American cinema. I believe "Mac and Me" is charged with such velocity, that in a decade, or even two, people will look back on it as a prime example of the medium of film. What a shame that it would have taken them that long.

Awe man i love this movie, i remember going to my friends house just to watch it, when we were little. Yes i know it is a little cheesy, but so is other stuff, and movies. I think people should give this film more credit, it was good for it's time, still it isnt ET, but it is good in it's own way. And the guy who played Michael was HOT!!!!!!!

The dance party scene was such subtle product placement. I can't say why exactly, but for some reason I was left craving a Big Mac after watching the movie. Hmmm.... If anyone can watch the dance scene and tell me exactly why it was in the movie, I would love to hear it. Also perplexing were the jogging scene with musical score (even Phil Collins at his worst would have been an improvement) and the cameo by that annoying red-headed kid from 'Different Strokes'. Perhaps someone who has watched the movie repeatedly and considers it a cult favorite could enlighten us....? I do like the fact that the producers cast a kid in a wheelchair as the star, but the writing was awful and the plot was laughably bad. It was an ET knock-off right up to the end, where you will find a shocking conclusion rivaled only by "The Usual Suspects"!

A lot of people compare this film, often unfavourably to E.T. However, the similarities it does share with that film are massively outweighed by its differences. E.T is a little brown alien, MAC IS AN ORANGE ALIEN! E.T says things like, "Ee-ll-i-ooot" and "Oow-ch", MAC CAN'T SAY HUMAN WORDS! E.T has a glowing finger, MAC DOESN'T! E.T is alone on planet Earth after his family leave him, MAC'S FAMILY ARE ON PLANET EARTH WITH HIM! Elliot from E.T has no physical disabilities, THE BOY FROM MAC AND ME IS IN A WHEELCHAIR! The music from E.T is an original score from John Williams. THE MUSIC FROM MAC AND ME IS BY SOMEONE WHO LIKES THE BACK TO THE FUTURE MUSIC AND HAS JUST TRIED TO COPY IT! Where is the McDonald's dance scene in E.T? Oh thats right, there isn't one. Where are the big name stars in Mac and Me? Oh that's right, there isn't one!! Come on people, lets stop saying these films are similar. People say me and my brother are practically the same, but there's loads of differences between us. Please judge these brother films on their separate merits.

While most of the comments made by other viewers deriding this movie are accurate, does it really matter? It is just a very poorly made film. There is no more product placement than seen in many other films, but it is so poorly integrated I can understand why people see it as obnoxious. The rest of the film is disjointed and many scenes are superfluous, but there are plenty of movies aimed at the family market that are just as objectionable. I enjoyed watching it on cable last night for the first time (if only to laugh at it), but I can see why kids may have enjoyed it. I remember when it was theatrically released during my childhood. Yet even at that time it looked ridiculous, lacking the camp appeal it has now. To respond to some of the site users who mentioned Alan Silvestri's score as being well done. He is not a bad composer, but he blatantly rips off a lot of his own work (or recycles it), such as his most impressive score (Back to the Future). Not to mention, he rips off bits from Jerry Goldsmith's score to Gremlins (Gizmo's accompanying whistling noises now provided by Mac). This proves how little originality existed anywhere in this film. I will agree with everyone that the aliens are awful looking: they are creepy, funny, and altogether unpleasant to see onscreen (even in clothing at the end of the film). As for the dance number, though it was ridiculous, the dancers were better than the majority of the actors in the film. Small note: It seemed a little odd that the doctor pulled out a half-used bottle of sedatives from his pocket and gave one to the lead character after the ravine incident.

If nothing else, MAC AND ME sorts out the really worthwhile people on this planet - those who can "see" decency and believe in solid family values as opposed to the viewers who were never really children - just young insensitives on their way to becoming hard-line realists and empty vessels. As one observant person commented, this film is nothing like ET yet still, without the benefit of a Spielberg direction or a budget of gynormous dollar-value, it succeeds in being heartwarming and a magical experience for children. My own kids grew up with this little film and having found it covered in dust in the garage last week (an old BETA copy) they all nestled up on the lounge together yesterday and watched it again. They were just as mesmerised and captivated as they had been in 1989 when they were just 9, 7 5 and 3. It was a rare moment of emotional beauty to see them re-capturing their childhoods. You wanna tell THEM about the blatant product placement, the "laughable aliens," the cornball script etc. I don't THINK so!!!!