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| Earth Girls Are Easy |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 100 |
| Public Rating: 6.80 (79 votes) |
Director: Julien Temple |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Fantasy/Romance/Comedy |
Year: 1988 |
| Writer(s): Julie Brown, Charlie Coffey, Terrence E. McNally |
| Distributor: Vestron Pictures |
| Reviewed by: Brian Andrews |
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I enjoyed this movie. However, it's not for everyone. The sets are very obviously fake, the special effects are cheesy, the dialogue isn’t exactly E.M. Forster, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless. If you realize at the outset that it is an oddball romantic fantasy, then you should be fine and the film should do its job of making you occasionally chuckle.
Basically, three space aliens crash land their spaceship into Val’s (Geena Davis) pool. Val must play host to the three aliens for the weekend while her pool is drained and their spaceship repaired. All sorts of “aliens-passing-themselves-off-as-humans” nuttiness ensues. Not exactly brain surgery!
But it is in no way supposed to be. The film is light and has its good natured intentions set out from the get go. The movie gets a lot of mileage out of the casting of Julie Brown (‘Just Say Julie’), whose Dr. Demento-esque pop songs appear throughout the soundtrack. Brown plays Val’s best friend Candy, whose witty one-liners and generally harebrained antics offer many of the laughs. Brown gets ample opportunity to display her considerable wackiness that she would later put to use on the MTV show ‘Just Say Julie,’ including performing catchy songs ‘I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid’ and the inspired ‘Cause I’m a Blonde’. The latter is performed as though a music video plunked itself right down in the middle of the film, complete with lip-synching and dancing extras. But it is so funny and the energy is so high that it works in spite of, or rather because of, it’s silliness. It is probably the high point in the movie. Brown (who co-wrote most of the songs as well as the film itself) seems to be having an absolute ball and her loopiness is contagious.
Geena Davis is suitably airheaded as Val, the Valley Girl manicurist who has just caught her doctor fiancé about to get busy with a nurse from his hospital. This provides for the intergalactic romance developing between Val and Mac (Jeff Goldblum), the leader of the three aliens. It further aids the chemistry between the two characters that Davis and Goldblum were a couple at the time of the movie. They are both sincere performers and it comes across more believably as should be expected in a film such as this.
Rounding out the cast are Jim Carrey (in an early role) and Damon Wayans as the other two aliens who take to 1980’s LA life like mice to cheese. Michael McKean is also amusing as the beach bum called into drain Val’s pool. All perform credibly and all seem to be having fun, which is the name of the game for this flick.
Julien Temple’s direction is suitably campy and evokes sort of an ‘80’a music video crossed with a 1950’s sci-fi movie. This should make sense since Temple got his start in the music vid business. The set designs are garish and the costumes outlandish, easily giving the sense that this film is not meant to be taken for anything but a fluffy good time. Which it is.
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