There are many shows I watched when I was young that were absolutely brilliant but which once watched again in adulthood, turn out to be a disappointment. For example, Knight Rider starring everyone's favourite late night drunken cheeseburger eater, David Hasselhoff. I used to absolutely love this show as a kid and dreamt of owning KITT, talking into my watch with my car pal and having a bad perm, (I achieved 1 out of 3). The A Team also had me mesmerised back in the day. I wanted to drive around in a big van, righting wrongs and firing thousands of bullets which hit no one. Ask any 80's child what they thought of these shows and 9 times out of 10 they'll remember them with fondness and great excitement. Show them an episode now and they'll probably get a feeling that they were not as good as once thought.
It's not the shows fault, these program's were indeed fantastic. It's our mistake to compare how something grabbed our imagination back then and how we view it today. We should just look back with our rose tinted specs and enjoyed the show for what it was. The problem when we try to revisit them is that we've had enough time to grow bitter and angry with the world. When I watched the reruns of Knight Rider, for example, I found it incredibly dated and the futuristic car looks like a museum piece. The A Team; very formulaic and all the episodes are very similar in structure and storyline. The bottom line is that unfortunately shows from your youth are nearly always not as good as you remember them to be.
I mention this because of the next movie in our list, Mac and Me (1988). I seem to remember this in my youth, either on someone's VHS recorder or Terrestrial telly and I seem to remember actually enjoying it. It certainly would not have made it into my personal top 100 bad movies.
So when it came to watching this movie for the first time in 25 years, I had to wonder why was it in this list? Was it really bad? Had my memory from my youth failed me yet again?
Yes, yes it had.
#82 Mac and Me (1988)
Mac and Me is the story of a young alien whose family is accidentally hoovered up by a NASA probe which is visiting their home planet and they end up being brought back to Earth. Mac and his family look like the bastard sons of channel 4 puppet Pob and BBC1 Muppet Andrew Marr. They are not a pretty bunch but still lookers compared to the cast of TOWIE. The aliens look like mutants who have survived a Nuclear winter and not lovable little scamps. In an industry that peddles 'cutesy' to sell merchandise tie ins with their movie, I was a little surprised and from a film that has massive commercialism, (which I will discuss later), this seems like a massive ball dropping moment.
Our ugly new friends, NASA, then lose the aliens and after searching down the back of the sofa and in the fridge, decide to stop being fuckwits and look properly. Mac's mum, dad and sister wander into the desert and Mac jumps into the largest SUV he can find. Inside the SUV are Eric Cruise, (Jade Calegory), who is wheelchair bound, his brother Michael, (Jonathan Ward), and his mother Janet, (Christine Ebersole), who are in the process of moving to Illinois for a new start.
They get stopped by NASA but they don't find Mac. This could be because its dark or he's under a cloth, but more likely it's because the NASA bod waves a torch, looks 1mm either side of the mum and gives up after 1 second. It's no surprise NASA have not found life on other planets when lazy idiots like this bloke can't be arsed to look in a car 2 miles from NASA HQ.
Waved on by a man who probably only thinks of his next pay check and might even wee in his bosses tea, the family drive off to their new home. Mac, off course, ends up going with them too and it is Eric who first discovers Mac, albeit with half glimpses and discovering foot prints he can not explain. He manages to capture Mac into a vacuum cleaner using the same suck technique NASA used earlier, (there is a lot of suck in this movie) and so proves to new neighbour friend, Debbie, (Lauren Stanley), and brother Michael, that Mac really does exist.
When FBI agents track Mac down to Eric's, Eric decides that they must get Mac out of the house to protect him. Therefore they smuggle him out disguised in a Teddy Bear costume and head to McDonald's where Courtney, (Tina Caspary), Debbie's sister, is working. I think this is totally original and I can not think of another movie when an alien has to be smuggled out of the house by a group of kids to avoid the FBI.
Debbie, who takes it all in her stride that her new neighbour has brought an alien into her place of work, drives them out of town to search for Mac's family. I'm not sure if this is a mistake in the movie, but the van she drives appears to be overtaken by rather slow galloping horses. Surely if a horse overtakes your vehicle, you have less than 1 horse power and so it is not really suitable to try to outrun an army of agents in hot pursuit? It might even be quicker to tie a Yorkshire terrier to a wheelbarrow and shout 'mush' than their chosen method of transport!
Somehow they find Mac's family in a cave in the dessert, but our alien pals are close to death. Fortunately our gang are all medically trained and know that as well as cleaning blood off a road, dissolving teeth and stripping rust of metal, Coke is a magical elixir that brings aliens back to life. Mac's family drinks, lives and we all cheer. Well done to the good people of Coke for bringing this life giving liquid to the masses.
With Mac and his family reunited, they head off back to Eric's. Along the way they stop at a petrol station and the aliens decide to pop into the nearby supermarket to pick up a 'Twix' and 'Q magazine'. A security guard who is obviously surprised to see a bunch of aliens in his store, vows not to sniff the oven cleaner again and gets his gun out. Mac's dad somehow gets it, there's a standoff, then there is an explosion and Eric is dead. I've paraphrased slightly but I will admit my attention had wandered by this point. I was desperately trying to think of that other film this movie reminded me off. Or I'd gone for a piss, one or the other. Or maybe both.
Anyway, I do know that the aliens manage to bring Eric back to life but they do not bother to fix his disability. For this heroic deed, they are made US citizens, receive a welcome hamper from Wal-Mart and NASA promises not to dissect them. Presumably had they done the job properly, there would have been also have been a cash prize.
So that's the movie and this would normally be the part of my blog where I would start tearing into the cast one by one and pointing out that they were the major cause of the failure of this movie. For once, this is not true. The cast may young, but play their parts well. Throughout this blog I have been avoiding the little alien in the room. The fact is as obvious as the typos in this blog that this movie is just one massive rip off of ET: The Extra Terrestrial.
Mac and Me is so similar to ET that it does feel like a remake. For starters, Eric is similar in age to Elliott and both Eric and Elliott have similar aged brothers called Michael. Debbie is a slightly older version of Gertie but both 'gangs' feel very similar. Eric, like Elliott, discovers the alien first. Michael and Debbie, like Michael and Gertie, discover the alien next. Both Mac and ET are trying to find their family. Both Mac and ET leave the house dressed in a costume. Both have government agents hot in pursuit. Both escape in a van. Both sets of aliens have healing powers. Both work with the joke: What is (insert Mac or ET) short for? He has little legs. And so on and so on.
The working title for ET was actually ET and me, so not only was plot, casting and situations lifted, but also the name of the movie. There is one scene when Eric is escaping in his wheelchair from an army of FBI agents who are chasing him, (I say an army of FBI agents, but I actually believe it was an army of Steven Spielberg's lawyers trying to issue a cease and desist!). Eric has Mac on his lap and making good speed along a road. The camera pans out to a long shot and all of a sudden you are reminded of the scene of Elliot on his bike with ET in the basket on the front. For a split second and with much shaking of head, the scene becomes an exact copy and you worry that if Mac all of a sudden gains the power to levitate both himself and Eric, that they will float past a full moon. Fortunately they don't, unfortunately the rest of the movie does nothing to help us shake the feeling that this is just plagiarism on a major scale. This is a big annoyance, but there is another and that is the sheer volume of product placement.
In the movie Wayne's World, there is a great scene in which Wayne and Garth, whose TV show has now gone to a network, say that this will not change them and that they will not sell out. This scene is played out in short cuts between Wayne and Garth and Benjamin. As the camera goes back to Wayne and Garth they are seen quite clearly wearing branded products like Reebok and the scene ends with Benjamin saying, 'it's your choice' and Wayne saying, 'yes it's my choice and the choice of a new generation' before gulping down a can of Pepsi. This is a funny parody of the problem of blatant product placements in movies and no more is there a real life example of this, than in Mac and Me.
I've already mentioned how Coke saved the day and along with McDonalds and Skittles they must have pumped huge sums into this film to get their products into the movie. They are on screen continuously and you would think that there are no other brands in the world except for these 3. Scene after scene the characters gulp coke, chomp skittles and go in and out of McDonald's. In one particular cringy scene, when Eric and Mac are in McDonald's, Ronald McDonald makes an appearance by dancing with the 'Teddy Bear', Mac in what amounts to a 5 minute commercial. This part of the movie is what I imagine Hell to be like, evil clowns dancing with Teddy Ruxpin.
I found a review of Mac and Me from 1987 which says whilst we are waiting for ET to come onto VHS, this is a good alternative. This is a view I can relate to. In the 80's movies took an age to be released on VHS and ET was 6 years between cinema and it's eventual VHS release in 1988. In a world where a film you quite liked was not readily available, then yes, a similar movie would be enjoyable and fun. Had I lived in a cave in the 20 odd years since, I probably would have still enjoyed this as a family movie about a kid and an alien he has befriended. But although the place I have lived in for the last 20 years has been stuck in the 80's, the rest of the world did not pass me by.
And so this is where the older me now spoils the movie as I have seen ET numerous times and during the entire movie I was comparing Mac and Me back to this film. It is hard not to. Also I am slowly getting wound up by these 'evil' multi-nationals, that I am now aware off, constantly hijacking the movie. Both of these factors just combine to rile me and in the end I just could not like the movie or even tolerate it.
They get stopped by NASA but they don't find Mac. This could be because its dark or he's under a cloth, but more likely it's because the NASA bod waves a torch, looks 1mm either side of the mum and gives up after 1 second. It's no surprise NASA have not found life on other planets when lazy idiots like this bloke can't be arsed to look in a car 2 miles from NASA HQ.
Waved on by a man who probably only thinks of his next pay check and might even wee in his bosses tea, the family drive off to their new home. Mac, off course, ends up going with them too and it is Eric who first discovers Mac, albeit with half glimpses and discovering foot prints he can not explain. He manages to capture Mac into a vacuum cleaner using the same suck technique NASA used earlier, (there is a lot of suck in this movie) and so proves to new neighbour friend, Debbie, (Lauren Stanley), and brother Michael, that Mac really does exist.
When FBI agents track Mac down to Eric's, Eric decides that they must get Mac out of the house to protect him. Therefore they smuggle him out disguised in a Teddy Bear costume and head to McDonald's where Courtney, (Tina Caspary), Debbie's sister, is working. I think this is totally original and I can not think of another movie when an alien has to be smuggled out of the house by a group of kids to avoid the FBI.
Debbie, who takes it all in her stride that her new neighbour has brought an alien into her place of work, drives them out of town to search for Mac's family. I'm not sure if this is a mistake in the movie, but the van she drives appears to be overtaken by rather slow galloping horses. Surely if a horse overtakes your vehicle, you have less than 1 horse power and so it is not really suitable to try to outrun an army of agents in hot pursuit? It might even be quicker to tie a Yorkshire terrier to a wheelbarrow and shout 'mush' than their chosen method of transport!
Somehow they find Mac's family in a cave in the dessert, but our alien pals are close to death. Fortunately our gang are all medically trained and know that as well as cleaning blood off a road, dissolving teeth and stripping rust of metal, Coke is a magical elixir that brings aliens back to life. Mac's family drinks, lives and we all cheer. Well done to the good people of Coke for bringing this life giving liquid to the masses.
With Mac and his family reunited, they head off back to Eric's. Along the way they stop at a petrol station and the aliens decide to pop into the nearby supermarket to pick up a 'Twix' and 'Q magazine'. A security guard who is obviously surprised to see a bunch of aliens in his store, vows not to sniff the oven cleaner again and gets his gun out. Mac's dad somehow gets it, there's a standoff, then there is an explosion and Eric is dead. I've paraphrased slightly but I will admit my attention had wandered by this point. I was desperately trying to think of that other film this movie reminded me off. Or I'd gone for a piss, one or the other. Or maybe both.
Anyway, I do know that the aliens manage to bring Eric back to life but they do not bother to fix his disability. For this heroic deed, they are made US citizens, receive a welcome hamper from Wal-Mart and NASA promises not to dissect them. Presumably had they done the job properly, there would have been also have been a cash prize.
So that's the movie and this would normally be the part of my blog where I would start tearing into the cast one by one and pointing out that they were the major cause of the failure of this movie. For once, this is not true. The cast may young, but play their parts well. Throughout this blog I have been avoiding the little alien in the room. The fact is as obvious as the typos in this blog that this movie is just one massive rip off of ET: The Extra Terrestrial.
Mac and Me is so similar to ET that it does feel like a remake. For starters, Eric is similar in age to Elliott and both Eric and Elliott have similar aged brothers called Michael. Debbie is a slightly older version of Gertie but both 'gangs' feel very similar. Eric, like Elliott, discovers the alien first. Michael and Debbie, like Michael and Gertie, discover the alien next. Both Mac and ET are trying to find their family. Both Mac and ET leave the house dressed in a costume. Both have government agents hot in pursuit. Both escape in a van. Both sets of aliens have healing powers. Both work with the joke: What is (insert Mac or ET) short for? He has little legs. And so on and so on.
The working title for ET was actually ET and me, so not only was plot, casting and situations lifted, but also the name of the movie. There is one scene when Eric is escaping in his wheelchair from an army of FBI agents who are chasing him, (I say an army of FBI agents, but I actually believe it was an army of Steven Spielberg's lawyers trying to issue a cease and desist!). Eric has Mac on his lap and making good speed along a road. The camera pans out to a long shot and all of a sudden you are reminded of the scene of Elliot on his bike with ET in the basket on the front. For a split second and with much shaking of head, the scene becomes an exact copy and you worry that if Mac all of a sudden gains the power to levitate both himself and Eric, that they will float past a full moon. Fortunately they don't, unfortunately the rest of the movie does nothing to help us shake the feeling that this is just plagiarism on a major scale. This is a big annoyance, but there is another and that is the sheer volume of product placement.
In the movie Wayne's World, there is a great scene in which Wayne and Garth, whose TV show has now gone to a network, say that this will not change them and that they will not sell out. This scene is played out in short cuts between Wayne and Garth and Benjamin. As the camera goes back to Wayne and Garth they are seen quite clearly wearing branded products like Reebok and the scene ends with Benjamin saying, 'it's your choice' and Wayne saying, 'yes it's my choice and the choice of a new generation' before gulping down a can of Pepsi. This is a funny parody of the problem of blatant product placements in movies and no more is there a real life example of this, than in Mac and Me.
I've already mentioned how Coke saved the day and along with McDonalds and Skittles they must have pumped huge sums into this film to get their products into the movie. They are on screen continuously and you would think that there are no other brands in the world except for these 3. Scene after scene the characters gulp coke, chomp skittles and go in and out of McDonald's. In one particular cringy scene, when Eric and Mac are in McDonald's, Ronald McDonald makes an appearance by dancing with the 'Teddy Bear', Mac in what amounts to a 5 minute commercial. This part of the movie is what I imagine Hell to be like, evil clowns dancing with Teddy Ruxpin.
I found a review of Mac and Me from 1987 which says whilst we are waiting for ET to come onto VHS, this is a good alternative. This is a view I can relate to. In the 80's movies took an age to be released on VHS and ET was 6 years between cinema and it's eventual VHS release in 1988. In a world where a film you quite liked was not readily available, then yes, a similar movie would be enjoyable and fun. Had I lived in a cave in the 20 odd years since, I probably would have still enjoyed this as a family movie about a kid and an alien he has befriended. But although the place I have lived in for the last 20 years has been stuck in the 80's, the rest of the world did not pass me by.
And so this is where the older me now spoils the movie as I have seen ET numerous times and during the entire movie I was comparing Mac and Me back to this film. It is hard not to. Also I am slowly getting wound up by these 'evil' multi-nationals, that I am now aware off, constantly hijacking the movie. Both of these factors just combine to rile me and in the end I just could not like the movie or even tolerate it.
At the end of the movie the words 'Do not worry, we will be back' appear rather hopefully as Mac and family drive off to start a new life. Now it would be easy to end with 'I fucking hope not' or 'thankfully they never did', but I'll end, however, on a pedantic note and another unfortunate side effect of getting older. To the person who stole/dreamt up the idea for this movie.....
It's Mac and I.
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