My Favorite Martian (1999)

Feels like it's been a while since I actually covered a space sci-fi on my blog named loosely after a space sci-fi movie... I mean, it was never intended for space sci-fi's to be the sole featuring content from day 1 really, but I think we have to go back to mid August with Asteroid-a-Geddon to find the last one and I think that only just barely qualifies as a space sci-fi... and as it's been so long I have a bit of need to want to digest some more astrological themed science fiction content. And as it's Disney week again this week I'm opting for 1999's: My Favorite (sic) Martian. A live action Disney movie staring Christopher Lloyd as the eponymous Martian. My expectations going in are fairly low for this one to be honest. Not a huge Christopher Lloyd fan but don't necessarily dislike him either, he's obviously brilliant in Back to the Future, but is he just going to re-hash the chaotic wackiness from his role in that in this one? I suspect so... that and it currently holds a paltry 5/10 on IMDB, 12% on rotten tomatoes and garnered mostly negative reviews from critics and audiences grossing a measly $36 million to offset it's budget of $68 million. Just the $36 million. It's a wonder how Michael Eisner was able to keep food on the table. And they spelled favourite wrong in the title which, is not doing much for this movies first impression... So yeah my expectations for this one are already fairly low.

Hapless news producer Tim O'Hara (Jeff Daniels) is on his way home after covering the story of a space shuttle launch from the Vandenberg Air Base, when he unknowingly witnesses the crash of a UFO on the beach with his work colleague Brace Channing (Elizabeth Hurley... wait... really?). After accidentally stealing the downed UFO, reduced to miniature size by it's pilot, Tim attracts the attention of the aforementioned Martian pilot who transforms his appearance into something human (Christopher Lloyd), turns himself invisible and hitches a ride with Tim back to his place. After attempting to take his ship back, getting spotted by Tim and getting a golf club to the cranium, Mr. Martian is incapacitated. But it turns out his suit has a consciousness all of it's own (voice: Wayne Knight) and after chasing Tim around his own place, Tim ends up getting his clock cleaned himself when Mr. Martian comes to and knocks him black out with a glass trophy. As Martian and his suit try to decide what to do next, one of Tim's co-workers Lizzie (Daryl Hannah) comes knocking and in a panic, Martian assumes Tim's appearance and answers the door... completely stark bollock naked. One quick outfit change later though and Martian does a lousy job of convincing Lizzie he is actually Tim, resorting to kissing her before shoving her out of he door in a quick daze of confusion. Lizzie seems mostly fine with though and mostly just over the moon that Tim is finally smitten by her. Meanwhile all manner of top secret looking people and scientists have descended on the UFO crash site determining that both the UFO and the Martian are missing but presumably found by somebody else before them... The following morning, after Tim wakes up upside down and stuck to the ceiling, remembering he got fired, Tim and Martian get more acquainted and Martian ironically adopts the name Uncle Martin when Tim, in a fit of hysterics, tries to show his landlady Mrs. Brown (Christine Ebersole) that he has an actual alien lifeform in his living room. Instead Mrs. Brown just develops a crush on Uncle Martin. After concluding that his spaceship needs some repairs and heading out into the outside world to source materials, Martian / Uncle Martin, with Tim, begins to attract too much attention, so in order to blend in the pair decide to source some more appropriate clothes. Zoot (that's the name of Martians suit by the way) doesn't take it very well though, although he does briefly develop a crush on a size 6 dress whilst inside the store... After stopping off along the way at the, let me just get this right: the senior citizen Hawaiian Tropic tanning contest... Tim catches up with some of news friends, including Lizzie who is clearly still smitten by Tim but thinks they should forget that last night ever happened, Tim has no idea what she's talking about... Tim gets his hands on some recording equipment but not before the shady government people, who are actually "The SETI Group" show up and, believing that Brace is somehow involved, knock her out and smuggle her into the back of a black van. After being interrogated back at the lab by Dr. Coleye (Wallace Shawn), who believes Brace is the alien inside the body of a "very attractive female.", Brace eventually convinces Dr. Coleye into helping her break the story of alien life arriving on Earth, by seductively talking him into working with her to reveal the truth. Tim, meanwhile, lets Martian borrow the hot tub in back garden to "shed his human form and let the waters of Earth touch his Martian skin" under the pretence of getting some video footage of Martian's genuine form, but unbeknownst to Tim, the SETI Group have tracked Martian back to his house...  Having gotten plenty of video evidence of Martian generally being an alien and doing alien things, Tim is all set to put his masterpiece together but seemingly has a crisis of confidence and, picking the phone up to Lizzie who massively misinterprets what he's asking of her, asks her to come round immediately to talk to her. Martian meanwhile discovers that his ship has an interstellar safety device that basically causes it to blow up if doesn't return to Mars in a certain amount of time and breaks the news to Tim that he needs to be home before 9.00pm tonight, before sinking into a Martian depression and quite literally falling to pieces. As Tim struggles to re-assemble him, Brace and her red skimpy cocktail dress let themselves into Tim's place, with Brace seemingly aware that Tim is harbouring an alien? After subtly trying to accommodate Brace whilst hiding Martian limbs, Tim and Martian end up having a conversation in the bathroom where Martian reveals he kissed Lizzie as Tim and that Tim definitely subconsciously likes Lizzie and not Brace. Whilst in the bathroom, Brace snoops around, finds Tim's footage of Martian and swiftly exits just as Lizzie, in her nicest cocktail dress, lets herself in. Coming to the realisation that maybe he does like Lizzie after all, Tim exits his own bathroom to discover a very angry Lizzie has completely misinterpreted the situation. She punches him in the stomach, not believing his story about Uncle Martin being a Martian and is about to leave when she overhears Zoot repairing the spaceship in the basement... Tim meanwhile is scrambling around desperately to find the tapes Brace has stolen, and realising they have a problem, assembles the pieces of Martian to race to the TV station, unknowingly miniaturising Zoot and Lizzie inside the spaceship in the process. At the TV station, Tim breaks the news to Martian that he's been videotaping him and that the tapes will go out for broadcast almost immediately, but Martian doesn't really seem to be that bothered...! They hatch a plan and Tim switches one of the video tapes with Martian locking up Grace and stealing her identity. It almost all goes wrong, but Tim and Martian somehow manage to pull off completely harpooning the story, despite Martian nearly transforming during the whole segment, but they pull their stunt and quickly make their escape with SETI, Dr. Coleye and half the TV station in pursuit as they do. Back at Tim's place though, Mrs. Brown spots the now miniaturised spaceship inside Tim's garage and mistakenly believing Tim has left it for her to take to the car boot sale picks it up with a miniaturised Zoot and Lizzie inside and chucks in with the rest of her toys! Tim and Martian make it back to Tim's place, realise what has happened and hit the road in pursuit of Mrs. Brown with SETI also in hot pursuit. And because this is a Disney movie and we haven't had a car chase yet: cue car chase between Tim and SETI! Although it does end with Tim driving his miniaturised car into a sewer before exploding out of a toilet so it at least has that to be different this time... Learning that all they need to repair the ship is a car alternator, Martian retrieves his ship after wooing Mrs. Brown and rips the alternator out of Tim's now defunct shit encrusted car and is about to make everything right until SETI rock up, anesthetise Martian and take the pair prisoner. At the lab, whilst Dr. Coleye examines Martian, the other scientists unwittingly activate the molecular device, causing the ship to grow to it's normal size and in doing so, freeing Lizzie and Zoot trapped inside. Lizzie sets Tim free whilst Zoot scares everybody away, but when things don't go quite according to plan, Lizzie has to borrow one of Martian's chewing gum disguises and becomes a freakishly large massive green alien thing with lots of tentacles in order to deal with a pair of soldiers. Martian meanwhile, is not doing so well and appears to have had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic. When they are unable to revive him Dr. Coleye declares him dead and has a tantrum about it. But Tim and Lizzie, sneaking in, reunite Martian and Zoot which brings him back to life and, after a short reunion, the gang realise they don't have much time before the ship goes kaboom and takes most of the planet with it... Somehow managing to sneak out of a high security institute without being noticed... the gang make it to a open clearing where Martian and Zoot hastily repair the ship and say their goodbyes and are just about to jet off until Dr. Coleye and his shady boss who hasn't been named throughout this entire thing yet... show up. It looks like he is about to stop them when he revels himself to be a Martian himself (Ray Walston), stranded on Earth since 1966 and after incapacitating Dr. Coleye, he hitches a ride with Martian back home, to errr... Mars that is... as the pair jet off into space together. But in the closing scenes, just as Tim and Lizzie start to settle in together, the spaceship returns, dropping Martian off who has decided he can't bear to leave Tim, or Earth and wants to stick around living in their place forever!

Phew! There was certainly enough going on in this one! It was apparently loosely based on the old TV show and I feel like they tried to cram a whole season into one movie! But uh yeah, this was alright! I mean it was very Disney and it had all the Disney clichés that come with that. But it was entertaining enough and for the most part was a pretty fun movie. I feel like it descended a little bit into the very silly and slapsticky moments a couple of handful of times that to be honest I'm not really a fan of anyway, but for the most part it was decent. And fun.

So as I kind of suspected going in, Christopher Lloyd as the eponymous Martian does generally tend to re-hash alot of what you see in Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He swings from one hyperactive emotional extreme to the next, is massively over the top in certain parts, then calm, collected and intellectual in others. He basically is Christopher Lloyd playing Christopher Lloyd. But to be honest, if you can look passed that, then it's not so bad. It's kind of similar to John Wayne in The Conqueror really... John Wayne only ever plays John Wayne. Just John Wayne in fancy dress. And Christopher Lloyd only ever plays Christopher Lloyd. But unlike in The Conqueror the role is essentially crafted so that it plays to Christopher Lloyd's strengths and to be honest, he's pretty entertaining, commanding your attention every time he's on screen and capturing each scene with a charisma only he has.

As for the rest of the movie, I thought everyone else put in a pretty decent job. I grew to like Jeff Daniels as Tim and I've probably seen him in a bunch of other things before now but I thought he was good here and I came away wanting to watch more of his stuff. Similarly Daryl Hannah as Lizzie was pretty decent although I feel like she was under utilised and could have had more of a character and more of a script. She was just sort of reduced to Tim's love interest. And then there is cinematic goliath: Liz Hurley. I have no idea how she wound up in this movie, but there she is! And she does a pretty good job of being the sort-of villain in this one. And enjoys the chance to have maybe a bit more of a character than perhaps Daryl Hannah does.

In terms of production, everything here is pretty top notch, but to be honest it's a Disney movie so you kind of expect it to be A-game level stuff. There was a fair few big special effects set pieces, especially with the ship and the car being shrunken and expanded e.t.c. and the movie did show it's age a little bit during those sequences, but I'm looking at it retrospectively and for the time it was all pretty high level stuff. Similarly the costume design / practical design with the aliens is all very good, if not maybe a little bit comical based on the intended audience, but they look good for the most part. The only part where the real turn of millennium styling was showing through was with Zoot - Martians Suit which I assume was mostly computer generated special effects? But it was very of it's time. But ok I guess really, none the less. And they didn't even credit Wayne Knight as the voice?! Which was just disrespectful really! The guy voices what ends up being one of the main characters?

Plotwise the movie does cram a whole lot of goings-on into that 1 hour 30 odd run time! And if nothing else you can't criticise the movie for padding anything out or slipping into a holding pattern! Every scene pretty much contributes to advancing the plot along to a degree, even if some of it is just pasted in for humour, but there is a whole lot of action going on! I wouldn't say it really becomes too much as such? But it does mean that there isn't a whole amount of time or energy spent on developing certain points. It's all very hastily played out, and succinctly portrayed before the movie moves on to the next key point. If they slowed down a bit and maybe let some parts develop a bit more naturally it might have made for a slightly easier to enjoy film but instead everything just happens and happens quickly and it does leave you feeling a bit mentally exhausted by the end of it!

And again as mentioned earlier, there is a good degree of Disney bingo going on in it as they work their way down the cliché checklist ticking things off. There's the blossoming romance bit, the hatching of a plan bit, the development of a "McGuffin" bit, the slapstick comedy bit, a car chase bit, some mild peril with a potential death which then isn't a death after all bit. All the regular hallmarks you come to expect from watching a Disney movie! And whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, you can't argue that it isn't formulaic. Disney have this system down that they use when putting a movie together and they rarely stray away from it. There's nothing different here, it follows the very same formula and structure that are present in many, many other Walt Disney Pictures productions.

I enjoyed this though. It was a bit like having to babysit a hyperactive child for one hour 30 and I feel potentially equally as mentally drained as a result...! But it was fun, it was enjoyable, it told a story and it featured decent actors being good at what they do as they went along. It wasn't without it's faults: it was very formulaic, sometimes silly and childish, and elements of it are very of it's time now retrospectively but it was a decent, enjoyable movie and I'd certainly be able to go back and watch it again. 3 out of 5.