My Favorite Martian Review
by Susan Granger (Ssg722 AT aol DOT com)February 21st, 1999
Susan Granger's review of "MY FAVORITE MARTIAN"
It's hard to believe that the big-screen version of the ingratiating CBS-TV sitcom of the early '60s could be this awful! Christopher Lloyd seems geniunely embarrassed as a stranded space alien who meets Earthling Jeff Daniels when his UFO crashes, and Jeff's a mild-mannered TV news producer investigating the phenomenon. (Bill Bixby played the role originally.) Lloyd stows away in the trunk of Daniels' car and moves into his home, posing as his Uncle Martin, wreaking havoc until, allegedly, his superiority complex and wacky charm prevail. Don't believe it! This is no "Addams Family" or "Brady Bunch." Screenwriters Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver ("Casper") concocted the wretched screenplay filled with banal one-liners and an ending unabashedly lifted from "E.T." - and the mess is ineptly directed by Donald Petrie ("Grumpy Old Men") who must have encouraged the over-acting. A bizarre casting note: Darryl Hannah plays a supposedly homely camerawoman who reads "Men are from Mars" and is secretly in love with Daniels who, predictably, pants for Elizabeth Hurley, his airhead co-producer. Wallace Shawn is a silly, villainous scientist who conspires with a secretive government operative, Ray Walston (TV's original Uncle Martin), to capture the emerald-green Martian to perform some gruesome experiments on him, probing his retractable antennas and analyzing his ability to levitate things by pointing his finger. And the Martian's spacesuit, named Zoot, is an over-sexed animated character, voiced by unbilled Wayne Knight. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "My Favorite Martian" is a lamebrained 2. It's cheesy, creepy, and sleazy or were those three Disney dwarfs?
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