Morons from Outer Space

It's British, so it's not going to look or feel like the American style of sci-fi comedy. It compares well with Spaceballs or Galaxy Quest. The humour is subtle and ironic, it spends as much time sending up the tabloids and cold war paranoia as it does spoofing contemporary sci-fi. It also goes down the one road that sci-fi doesn't travel very often: What if we are well up the food chain compared to our neighbours? The answer it arrives at is "Then we are in trouble." Above all this is as gentle as ET, with a big heart and a good moral at the end of the story. If you like this movie, try the 2000AD strip 'Skizz' a much darker treatment, but again from the alien point of view. T.

This movie takes aim at both Hollywood and its alien flicks and more importantly, British cinema's unfortunate marketing subordination to same. The special effects, cast, acting and production values are excellent proving that big budget Hollywood can at least be replicated in a lampoon genre. Contrary to nearly every paid critic's review, it is well written. No American or British icon escapes unscathed. The US critics really killed it and frankly, I don't know what Hodges did to deserve that kind of undeserved malice. It's akin to the politically correct fallout from "A Fish Called Wanda". Feel free to go there if you will. It's one of those small British films that people who enjoy silly and dark humor; satire and understatement; and simply well-made, good looking spoofs--this is one of those. It is dead on-target. Enjoy the payback from a great unassuming film that Hollywood made sure was dead on arrival: they were right in the sense that it was and remains "dead on".

It's not often that you see a film that is pure, unmitigated crap. This is one of them. (Hell, even the 2/10 rating is generous) The humour used is film is unspeakably infantile. Some of if, though, is very much of its time. There are some sly digs at the cult of celebrity and Britain in the 1980s. The only thing in this film that did it for me was Mel Smith's slightly sympathetic role as the unfortunate alien, Bernard. While we're on the subject, I don't even know why Smith, and his co-star, Griff Rhys-Jones ever bothered making this piece of trash in the first place!!! One major turn-off for me was the rather gaudy, tacky, cheaply-made look of the film. In fact, the whole thing looks rather false and plastic!! Compared to "Morons From Outer Space", director Mike Hodges' previous effort of the decade, "Flash Gordon" look like a Bafta award-winning masterpiece. If you've got nothing else better to do, I really would NOT recommend renting this film out!!

Scarcely in the same league as Verity Lambert's sixties work as the original producer of 'Dr Who', and certainly not the sort of film on which you'd expect to see the name of the director of 'Get Carter' and 'Croupier' (who had intended it merely to be the warm-up for a much more prestigious subsequent project). But his previous film HAD been the lurid remake of 'Flash Gordon', and as he himself observed the money's all up there on the screen. Pretty bad, but not quite the car crash that usually ensues when TV stars are let loose on the big screen, and there's definitely a mild attempt at satire; such as the depiction of the bumbling authorities and the perils involved in sneezing in a spacesuit.

This is simply and unfunny film to me. I didn't even get a slight giggle out of what I saw in the beginning... so I fast-forwarded, played & watched, fast-forwarded again and didn't find anything to capture my interest at all and never did I laugh nor did I give a slight giggle. I like quite a few nonsensical, stupid comedies but this film just didn't do it for me. I also have enjoyed quite a number of British comedies from TV shows to movies but this film is just lame to me. Morons in Outer Space is an appropriate title for the film but they are unfunny morons. The film isn't completely 100% trash that's why I'm giving it 2 stars out of 10 instead of rating it with a 1 star but it's not a good film to me. 2/10

A typical and very British low budget sci-fi comedy from 1985; don't expect much in the way of FX or satire here, as this is more of a quirky character-led work. It marks one of the few cinematic forays for Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, and both are funny, although members of a much larger ensemble cast. The actors are fine here and the situations memorably offbeat, although perhaps not as laugh-out-loud funny as something like CLOCKWISE. I think my favourite moment is the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS spoof.