ET with teeth

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2011)

I be blunt and say that I like this movie despite there being a lot of your standard Hollywood cookie cutter scenes and concepts, and a rather soppy ending. If I were to sum this film up in one line and that would be ET with teeth. The film is set in small town America focusing around some young misfit teenagers who have stumbled across some mysterious happenings. The two main characters, Joe and Alice are both from non-standard families (Joe's father is the local cop and his mother recently died in a factory accident, while Alice's father is the local crook, and doesn't seem to have a mother). However Joe and his friends are making a horror film for a film competition, but the filming is interrupted by a train crash.
The film is set in the 80's, which is another reason why I call it ET with teeth, but the main reason is that it is because it is about an alien who simply wants to get home, but the US Airforce simply will not let it. The alien does have a number of allies who are trying to assist it, but it is simply angered at being treated like a zoo exhibit, and it's opinion of humanity is not very high.
However, the film focuses around the teens, and we only know what the teens know. Thus, they witness a train crash (and in turn try to incorporate it into their film) and then strange things begin to happen, which includes the US airforce turning up. It is interesting how the army is always portrayed (okay, not always, but often) as a secret organisation that has its own agenda, and this agenda is not always for the benefit of the population at large.
Hollywood's relationship with the army is spotted at best. There are a number of films (such at Top Gun) which is promotes the armed forces (and as such the armed forces bend over backwards to assist them) while others (such as Super 8) is not all that flattering. It seems that there is a love/hate relationship. In a way people want the army to protect their 'liberty' but this desire is sometimes in conflict with the wealthy elite using the army to protect their own ends. The United States has been reasonably lucky in its history in that it has actually have very few foreign attacks on it's soil. Since the revolution, there has been the war of 1812 (when the British invaded and burnt the White House down), the Civil War, Pearl Harbour, and 9/11. Most of the deployment however have been foreign interventions for various reasons.
However, I get beyond the scope of this review. As I said, this film ends rather soppily, but I guess that is what one can expect from such films. We spend most of the film wanting to know what happens, and while we are not guessing, we are hoping for something that we never expect, however, in most cases that simply does not happen. I guess, as the bible does say, 'there is nothing new under the sun'.