MY FAVORITE MARTIAN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
Pssst, if you'll be very quiet, I'll sneak you inside the locked doors
of one of Hollywood's creative departments where some
multimillion-dollar executives are planning their next movie.
On the far wall they have glued pages from old "TV Guides". It falls to
the senior executive in charge - he doesn't make those big bucks for
nothing - to throw the dart.
Zip, it hits the old "My Favorite Martian" series. This is quite
fortuitous, since it came close to hitting Bonanza instead. With
Bonanza, they'd have to hire a big cast and do expensive location
shooting, but, with a movie like MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, they can make it
much cheaper. One suit says that they can get his daughter to use her
Erector set and the family camcorder to film the opening Mars land rover
sequence.
They need someone to write the script. Best to use two writers so they
can get the job done fast. They go for Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver.
Stoner and Oliver whipped out a quick, if bland, script for CASPER,
another remake, so they could probably be counted on to do the same for
MY FAVORITE MARTIAN.
One guy suggests that they get the lead from the original television
show to do a cameo part. It's his lucky day. Robin Williams answers the
phone himself. But as luck would have it, Robin turns out to have been
in a different old TV show, one called "Mork & Mindy." Such is the
problem of being a 25-year-old executive, your memory only stretches
back so far. Looking in the Internet Movie Data Base, he finds out that
the original Martian was Ray Walston. A call to him, and they have a key
supporting player signed.
In order to keep the attention of the adults in the audience, they
figure a woman reporter with minimal brains but maximum cleavage would
be perfect. They are on a roll now, as their first choice for the role,
Elizabeth Hurley, accepts. They'll ask the writers to put in as much
sexual innuendo as possible and throw in a bit of nudity - although not
by her, it turns out - just so long as the movie gets no worse than a PG
rating.
For the rest of the cast, they go for old reliable Christopher Lloyd
from the BACK TO THE FUTURE series to play the Martian and Jeff Daniels
from 101 DALMATIANS to be the poor reporter who discovers the Martian.
In their best touch, they even find a part for the lovely, but generally
ignored, actress Daryl Hannah from SPLASH.
A year or so later, the executives gather in their plush screening room
to view the results. MY FAVORITE MARTIAN runs just 1:32. It got the PG
rating they needed even with the sexual innuendo, brief nudity, mild
profanity and monsters that will scare some little ones. They figure,
probably correctly, that the film is appropriate for all ages even if
they did push some limits.
My son Jeffrey, age 9, probably summed it up best. He said that the
movie was little more than a 30 minute TV show and gave it just * �. His
friend Jessica, age 9, liked it a little better (***) and her brother
George, age 7, liked better still (****), so there is some hope for good
box office numbers, but more importantly, for those lucrative video
sales and rentals.
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Have I Seen This Movie: Yes
And What Did I Think?: This is a rather silly Disney remake of the 1960's TV show that starred Ray Walston. I like Christopher Lloyd, but he's had better roles then this as Uncle Martin, the martian. Jeff Daniels is unfunny here as is the supporting characters who are Daryl Hannah, Elizabeth Hurley, Wallace Shawn and Ray Walson, who starred in the original series. Wayne Knight supplies the voice of Zoot the Suit, which is a stupid idea of a living suit, so to speak. It's very juvenile, but then it is made by Disney, so kids may like it. The one humorous but silly part is when Jeff Daniels and Chris Lloyd are being chased in their car, they shrink down, go through the sewers and wind up in some guy's toilet. The poor guy is about to.... well you know, and they return to full size once again.Other then that, it didn't provide much laughs, but rather just silly kidstuff humor. I never saw the original series but I'm guessing it was better then this movie if it warranted a 90's film adaptation which is the trend these days for 60's sitcoms. I'm just dreading the next decade when the 70's sitcoms come into play more. Do we really need a big screen adaptation of Three's Company? *Shudder* Anyway, don't bother with this movie unless you can see it for free somewhere.
