Spaced Invaders Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Spaced Invaders Blu-ray Movie Review

Spacing out.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman September 19, 2015

Does anyone remember the old video game called Space Invaders? It's an old Atari/arcade game in which players control a ship that moves along a horizontal axis across the bottom of the screen and fires a projectile with each press of a button at a mass of enemies, all clustered together in rows, descending from the top of the screen. It's one of the simplest and monotonous but, for its time, exciting games ever made. It's highly repetitive and lacking much imagination (granted it's limited by the technologies of its time) but credit it for focus and proficiency in handling its task. On the flip side, Spaced Invaders -- that's with an extra "D," probably to denote or predict the grade it would receive (kidding) -- is a movie that plays with no real discernible rhythm, offering a scattered and aimlessly humorous little escape about aliens who land in a small Illinois town. Various shenanigans play out, none of which are particularly interesting or meaningful. So, on one hand is the video game that's repetitive but focused, and on the other is the movie that aimlessly goes in a million different directions. Which one is the classic, again?

Roughing it.

The small town of Big Bean, Illinois -- a postcard-perfect picture of classic Middle America -- is about to receive some unwanted guests. Aliens fighting a desperate space battle happen to pick up a radio signal from Earth that's telling of a great Martian invasion (little do they know it's the famous fictitious Orson Wells broadcast, replayed for Halloween night). The aliens -- including Bipto (voiced by Jeff Winkless), Giggywig (voiced by Bruce Lanoil), Ziplock (voiced by Joe Alaskey), and Pez (voiced by Tony Pope) -- head down to Earth in hopes of participating in a big victory for their kind. Instead, they find trick-or-treaters and get swooped up in the fun, mistaken for some of the local children in costume. One little girl, Kathy (Ariana Richards), and her new friend Brian (J.J. Anderson), piece together what's happening quickly, but the adults, including Kathy's sheriff father Sam (Douglas Barr), take a while longer to catch on. Can careful intergalactic negotiations cool off the tensions, or will comic mischief rule, and ruin, the day for every species involved?

Spaced Invaders isn't a total loss of a movie, but its sum leaves a whole lot to be desired. Its key struggle is its lack of cohesion. Its uncanny ability to take a rather simple, focused idea -- a band of misfit aliens land in a small Middle America town, resulting in comic mischief -- and do absolutely nothing of any real novelty or worth with it is quite staggering. There are many reasons why the movie struggles to find a rhythm, chief amongst them being aliens who just try too hard, or better said writers and filmmakers who think an alien randomly looking like Maverick and sounding like Jack Nicholson was somehow a good idea. The film leans on the basic crutches that carry movies like E.T. (or, on the far, far, faaaaaaar other end of the spectrum, Mac and Me) of the children being the only ones who understand the aliens, while the adults first fail to believe they exist and then act in some way belligerent around them. There's the unruly, older, shotgun-toting, pickup-driving, overalls-wearing old farmer in whose barn the aliens crash and, of course, the new town sheriff just settling into his new surroundings and his new job. The film is overflowing with bland typecast characters and details that pull the movie every which way but towards a defined center. It works in spurts around its periphery, but it never comes together with any real tangible sense of worth, making it one of those movies that plays well while watching some random stretch of ten minutes on cable but not necessarily as a full 100 minute cinematic experience where fluff and filler seems to always interfere with the few bits of here-and-there goodness.

Still, the movie does get a few things right, even if it's not as ridiculous to the level of cult classic status as Howard the Duck, precisely zany as Mars Attacks! (speaking of Jack Nicholson), or as fun as the best of the comically oriented "small town invaded by unwelcome guests" movies like Tremors and Eight Legged Freaks. Despite some odd styling and vocal choices, the aliens can be fun in spurts as they attempt to sort out where they are and who it is they're dealing with on Earth. There's some good banter throughout the movie, hindered by the aliens' lack of personality beyond attire or a line, but as a group they're relatively fun and look pretty good, too, insofar as the alien suits and makeup are concerned. The acting hits just the right tone, with nearly very character playing it hammy and not at all serious outside of the children whose own brand of silliness stops on the outside with their costumes (the kid in the duck suit might just be the best thing about Spaced Invaders because...it's a kid who goes through the entire movie dressed like a duck. Score one for the comical random factor).

Spaced Invaders Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Spaced Invaders lands on Blu-ray with a passable, but hardly noteworthy, 1080p transfer. The image presents the basics well enough, though with little pizzazz. Details are OK, presenting general textures with relative ease but lacking the complexity of a finely-honed filmic presentation. Human faces look decent in close-ups, and alien costumes show some level of depth and definition when the camera pushes in tight. Colors are likewise a little on the drab side, absent the richness and vitality of crisper images but never really going disturbingly pale, either. Black levels, on the other hand, are prone to looking washed out and gray. The image is littered with evidence of wear in the way of speckles and stray vertical lines, and grain is thick. Light macroblocking interferes at times, too, and the image suffers from some jittery jumps. It's about what audiences have come to expect from Mill Creek: serviceable but in no way dazzling.

Spaced Invaders Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Spaced Invaders crashes and burns with a paltry, uninspired Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. Sound presents in a "phantom center" style with no drift or sense of space, making it, for all intents and purposes, a mono soundtrack. Music is stifled and lacking much definition beyond the basics. It's shallow and lightly scratchy, failing to excite the aural senses. Various crashing and action effects fall flat, presenting the basic sound effect but nothing more. Ambience is practically nonexistent, at least in terms of even hinting at immersion. Dialogue is at least steady and never a struggle to hear.

Spaced Invaders Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Spaced Invaders contains no supplemental content.

Spaced Invaders Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Spaced Invaders was never going to be a classic, but there's enough potential for mindless diversionary entertainment. The movie works in that regard, to a point. The plot is nearly nonexistent and the characters are totally forgettable, but some spurts of joyous, zany humor make the movie worth a watch as a secondary distraction rather than one's main focus of attention. Mill Creek's Blu-ray doesn't help. Hugely mediocre video, merely passable sound, and no extras certainly won't make this the centerpiece of any Blu-ray collection. Rent or pick it up on the very cheap, cheaper, even, than the studio's usual entry bargain pricing.