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Hello and welcome to the Most Excellent Eighties Movies Podcast.

It's the podcast where we zoom our way across the cosmos of the eighties movies we think we love or might have missed with these our grown up eyes to see how they hold up.

And today we're talking about My Stepmother is an Alien, a movie selection from nineteen eighty eight about which letterbox says she's gorgeous and she's never been kissed, needless to say, she's from another planet trying to rescue her home planet from destruction.

A gorgeous extraterrestrial named Celeste arrives on Earth to begin her scientific research.

She woos quirky scientists, doctor Steve Mills, a widower with young daughter.

Before long, Seless finds herself in love with Steve and her new life on Earth, where she experiences true intimacy for the first time.

But when she loses sight of her mission, she begins to question where she belongs.

Ooh, and here comes the trailer.

Stephen Mills, research astronomer, married to his work.

Then one night they send a radar signal into another galaxy.

Now they are sending someone back.

If we don't get that transmission from him, our planet is doomed.

Hi.

Hi, she's got forty eight hours to save her civilization and deciphered hours.

Thank you, delicious.

That's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

I must be pouring a chance off here.

No, they're still aren't good.

We're making progress there.

She's never made love.

She's so stupid.

We could have been doing this the whole time.

We only met three hours ago and never made breakfast.

Dandy, don't you think this is pretty strange?

Marry you?

Where did she get a wedding dress on two hours notice?

But she just carried on one around with her in a case of emergencies.

Danny married her person another planet, danik Royd.

Her stepmother is not an alien.

Jim, astronomery was wonderful, Fiers.

And you got yourself a handful right now.

John, my stepmother is an alien.

A comedy of cosmic proportions.

Why did they only call out John?

Love it.

He was big snl.

Okay, all right, Well he's not the star of the movie.

No, all right.

I'm Chrissy Lynz, one of the directors at the Neighborhood Comedy Theater in downtown Mesa, Arizona.

And I'm Nathan Blackwell.

I'm an independent filmmaker in Phoenix, Arizona.

You nailed it, Nathan nailed it as always, and joining us today is a fabulous guest, a performer and comedian at the Neighborhood Comedy Theater, as well as a scientist who he's going to have lots of expertise on the science of.

Time, science questions.

Yes, it's mister Robert Fada.

Hello.

For the record, I am a I'm a chemist, but I will I will try and offer what little I remember from high school physics.

Okay, but you do own a lab coat.

I do own a lab coat.

I should have worn a lab coat.

Well, the audience can't see you.

Yeah, oh my god, I love your lab coat.

Lab coat right now, Christy, you're wearing a lab coat too.

Darn it.

I'm the only one without a lab coat.

Okay, I love the.

Idea because you're a filmmaker.

So my stepmother Is an Alien was Robert's choice.

When we were talking about eighties movies.

He was like, have you ever seen My Stepmother Is an Alien?

And I was like, no, but I should, Nathan, have you seen this movie before?

No?

Boy, this movie was a real ride.

I wanted to get in the car.

I wanted to go wherever it was going.

It took me to a lot of unusual places.

And I'm not sure how I feel, but yes, it was the first time watching this movie.

Was this a childhood favorite of yours?

Robert?

Yeah, but it was weird, Like I didn't see it when it came out in theaters because I was just too young.

So I ended up seeing it just like on daytime television where they would split it up with commercials and cut out all the lude stuff.

Not that there's like a ton of lud stuff in the movie.

It's it's more, there's more than a little.

I don't know that much.

I don't know that how much of that would necessarily have gotten cut by TV, because I feel like I remember most of it right.

Innuendo is tough.

Yeah, it is dripping with innuendo.

I remember liking it seeing it between the ages of seven and ten, I don't think I could narrow it down more than that.

It had been out for a few years at that point.

So I remember seeing it on daytime TV, and we had one of those VCRs that you could record what was on the television, and then we had a dual deck VCR, so you could like cut you could cut down the parts you didn't want, and so so I ended up getting basically like like a like a cut down version of the movie until one Christmas when my mom actually bought the movie and then we just watched that version, and so I then get to.

Real, what did she cut out?

Just the commercials Oh, okay, yeah, because.

She wanted to see all this stuff about how enthused the daughter was about her father having sex.

Super cut of that.

Yeah, she is so into her dad getting laid.

Yeah, it's like the.

Fuck where she actually knows the year that someone was last there.

Yes, yeah, huh, She's like she was recording it in her in her diary.

Yeah, who knew that?

Alan again, as a thirteen year old girl was the ultimate wingman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alison Hannigan is great in this movie.

It's debut, they say, introducing Alison Hannigan in the In the previous.

Yeah, she she comes out swinging and boy can she cry.

Yeah, she is just crying left, right and sideways.

Like she's so much passion.

Yeah, I feel like so very cursory research on this.

The director is an actor as well, and I feel like there's multiple examples of him just saying no, no, not far enough, keep going, just go for it, just go even further.

I think that goes with anything John Lewitz is doing.

Time Alison Hannigan has to cry.

Yeah, it's like no, no, keep just keep going, just go go.

Yeah, just take it wherever you want, just no barriers.

I like to think of this movie as like what if what if rom comms were made by and four men?

There's just like very little in the way of like subtext.

It's most just here's a beautiful woman that wants nothing more than to please this man for his brain and thoughts and not his physical appearance.

And it's Dan Akroyd.

That's interesting.

Yeah, rom coms you under totally different hands.

This would totally be like a female discovery empowerment movie and it's really all seen from the male point of view.

Yeah, so.

The singer loved Dan Ackroyd is.

Are we sure Dan Akroyd didn't write this movie.

We are not sure.

We're never sure anytime he's involved.

I have a note about the writing of this movie which might answer a few questions that we have about it.

Okay, The script credits Jericho Stone as writer, with revisions by Frank Gladdie, Richard Brenner, Susan Rice herschel Winegrod and Timothy Harris, Paul Rudnick, and Deborah Frank and Carl Sotter, and a further rewrite by Jonathan Reynolds.

Okay, that's how many people wrote this movie.

Well, it's as we know, the more writers the better.

Yeah, it takes a village to make a box office bomb.

Yes, So, Robert, I'm curious, when was the last time you'd seen this movie?

Probably ninety five, ninety six, so up until obviously a couple days ago.

So it's been a while.

Huh yeah, yeah, yeah, So I saw it thirty years ago and I'm watched and I watched it again a day before yesterday, and uh man, what a what a difference thirty years makes?

Boy adult subtext that's a thing now.

And there's just like not a lot of subtext in the moving No, everything is so sirvice level.

Huh.

Yeah.

The original writer, Jericho Stone, saw the story as a blark, as a as a sorry, as a dark allegory about child abuse, and that's how he pitched the movie in nineteen eighty one, and this is what it became.

I think through the various rewrites, I think that sort of moved away from that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not getting a bunch of that.

I'm not getting a bunch of that.

Except dan Aykroyd is really like he absolutely loves everything that his daughter, Alison Hannigan does until she starts accusing Kim Basinger as an alien, and he won't have any of it.

He gives her zero credit, like.

He he wants to send her to counseling right away.

Yeah.

Uh.

It's like the if you were to make the argument that it is about child abuse, the scene that you would use is where aliceon Hannigan is just crying and saying everything that has happened and everything that is wrong with the situation, and dan Aykroyd is just not believing her, and Kim Basinger is just sitting there watching this girl getting gaslight right in front of her and like her.

She just cannot take it like it's going it's it's like welling up her eyes like that whole scene is incredible.

So yeah, that that is probably that is probably the scene.

The scene that.

Yeah, But like other than that, I don't I don't know that I would call that this movie.

No, No, there's many other things i'd call this movie, but that wouldn't have been at the top.

No, a dark allegory for child abuse.

No, no, thank you.

All right, so let's jump in.

We're in a research lab.

John Lovetz pulls up in a Rolls Royce and dan Ackroyd is fussing around.

He's gonna do an experiment tonight using his employer's satellite dish.

Yes, and John Lovett's at this point is like turned up to like three.

Yeah.

He's his character from those old Saturday Night Live skit that used to hang out by the copy machine.

He wants to go meet women.

He's dan Akroyd's brother.

But did we ever did we ever learn why he has so much money and dan Ackroyd does not.

Or why he has does he?

I was thinking that he worked here or that he was dan Aykroyd's boss, But does he just have access to this, you know, high security science b.

Lab, so I think walked in.

So there's a couple of things.

One, it's the nineteen eighties.

I feel like security around laboratories wasn't what it is now at the airport, especially considering you used to be able to buy things that could be made into explosives with only like one chemical reaction at the pharmacy.

I imagine it's probably a little bit less secure in front of a laboratory in nineteen eighty eight as it is in twenty twenty five.

Their metal detector didn't really seem to be that reliable.

Two.

I got the impression that he has a well paying job.

I got like lawyer energy from John Lovett's based on way he drives and where he lives.

And not necessarily information, yeah.

Lack of scientific information, and just the fact that he uh just the fact that he seems to dress so smarty all of the time.

I'm not sure how much of that is John Lovett's and how much of that is just me reading into it, but that's what I got.

I don't know that that is stated anywhere in the film.

I don't think it is.

I don't think they give us that information.

But he's got a Rolls Royce and a beautiful beach house, so he's.

Whatever he's doing, he's very successful, except for when it comes to meeting women apparently, which is his only goal.

He hangs his jacket on the machine and the brass buttons cause a zapping to happen that allows the signal to bounce out of our galaxy and into the next galaxy.

Yay, they did it, but everything gets shut down and dan Akroyd gets fired because he has no proof.

Yeah, we were told in this movie that if they set that dial to over three hundred that it was going to fry everything.

And despite that, dan Akroyd's like, oh yeah, turn that baby all the way up.

And then you get the brass buttons turning the area where the magnetron or whatever it's called into a spencer's gifts and then like bang, you get a signal out of the galaxy.

Scientifically, does that hold up?

No?

But it's cool.

Yeah.

I did ask Groc if that that science works, and.

Yes, oh great, great, so Groc versus in Weird Science.

Yeah, make your own decisions.

Yeah, this movie is very weird science, like weird science was like two years ago with this many writers, I have to feel like this was pounded into more of a weird science direction over the years.

But I mean, you know, a dark comedy about child abut you probably wasn't gonna work anyway.

That would have been the best setup.

But yeah, so it's very weird.

Scion and see where he's going to get the girl of his dreams, But there's a question mark something's.

Looking for the girl of his dreams.

He just wants to send life to other worlds as a way of not dealing with the fact that he's a widower.

Yeah, when he does go home to aliceon Hannigan, she's like, I remember, mom, are you going to find me a new one and the jet?

No?

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to feed you fish sticks and pop tarts.

Uh yeah, I will say there wasn't.

Even though this movie is very objectifying toward Kim Basinger specifically, the only uh like the the real the only real misogyny that we kind of get from dan Aykroyd is when is when Alison Hannigan goes, I could pick up a paper route and he's like, oh, girls do that now?

Uh huh.

Other than that he's like pretty chill.

Yeah, like his brother played by John Lovett's who every woman is an object?

Yes, and yeah everyone is a little bit of a creep in this movie, like even just the idea.

Like there's a scene where like, oh my god, my daughter is growing up so fast.

Like Allison Hannigan is like, notice anything different about me?

And she's like an arm's length away, you know, yeah, and she goes like, I'm wearing a bra.

It's like, no, that's not daughter, that's not what that's not what you that's not how you prompt that discussion.

Look for alone, she was wearing arm warmers or whatever.

That thing with the multiple bracelets on the one hand is.

Yeah.

So they go to a party.

That was a trick question.

That was in trick questions.

It was she wanted, she was proud.

We meet Kim Basinger in space and I'm still confused about why their planet was in trouble.

But apparently Kim Basinger's planet is in trouble and her assignment is to go and be beautiful and get him to resend the signal he sent yes.

To save their not just their planet, their civilization.

Yeah, so putting brass buttons too close to a machine that's hooked up to a satellite.

Not only was able to send a signal faster than the speed of light too in neighboring galaxy, but it was so strong, in fact, that it knocked out that planet's magnetic gravitational orbit or something, and so they needed to send another signal to correct.

It, to knock the planet back into ten.

So in order to make sure that second signal got sent, Kim Beasinger had to go find Dan Ackroyd and get him to do it again.

Do we need more science scientists on those questions?

Yeah, that's more explanation than the movie gives you.

That was helpful to you, but it breaks it up over a long time to the point where like it doesn't make any sense.

It's just sort of science magic.

But that's we're kind.

Of dripped the information like every forty five minutes, which I could track every time I paused the movie to see how much.

Yeah, if you were to do a science drinking game, you would get a little bit buzzed in the first ten minutes and then you'd be completely sober by the end.

Yes, and I do always do a science drinking game whenever.

I watch that's not how you guys watch movies.

That's just that's just anything.

Okay, good to know.

So she gets to the party and she is being crazy.

She's eating cigarette but she's smoking carrots.

She's singing about Popeye, she wants spinach to warm her hands.

She's just being a total crackpot.

But she realizes immediately that she is being a total crackpot and that this is not working.

Yeah, this is the most eighties yuppie party, by the way, it's in the running for most eighties yuppie party.

Yeah.

She I feel like if you were to do like a cringe chart of this movie, like cringe over Time, I feel like the first ringe over time, Cringe over Time, the first twenty minutes, you would just get like a flat line up at the very top, and then it would slowly kind of come down towards the end.

Because like in that party, she's basically meaning but all the memes are like from nineteen eighty eight to like nineteen sixty.

There's a lot of like old timey comedy references in this movie.

Yeah, Like, yeah, it's fifty year old's trying to be hip, you know, Like in terms of the writers and directors and things like that.

Jimmy Duranty is the apex of this.

We'll get back to that, but yes, continue, she's also she's wearing She comes in wearing a Guynan hat.

Yeah.

He's got the big hoop hat with a hoop dress.

Yeah.

From Star Trek the Next Generation.

Yeah, hurt.

Yeah, it's a huge guy in hat and it.

I really thought like that was a nineteen eighties thing until I saw that party where no one else was wearing that giant hat.

I was like, Oh, this might just be a this might just be a Star Trek thing.

Yeah.

Uh So he takes her to his lab, but he can't get in because he's been fired, and they do a funny bit where all these i ds come zooming out of her purse.

She has a magical purse.

Yeah, yes, yeah, her person is alien little alien AI thing that's in there.

It's like do magic.

Yeah.

It can print ideas and make currency, and levitate people and objects and things and U project images and sounds.

Yeah, it's it's called in the it's called bag.

She refers to it as bag because obviously that's part of her culture is to call it bag.

But yeah, it's her magical device.

It's her her Jedi lightsaber if you will, Yeah.

Yep, her Harry Potter wand yeah yes yeah.

And Kim Basinger is probably the best part of this movie.

You know, she's the fun part of this movie in my opinion, Like she is the best when she is like she's beautiful, she's a fox, of course, but she's best when she is wrestling with self doubt.

Like she's most interesting, most compelling when she is both confident and an insecure.

And she's and she's doing a really great performance in this She was nominated for a Saturday Award for Best Actress in a Science Fiction Movie.

Is a science movie?

Uh?

Yeah?

She like everything that she that she tried.

She I feel like she was doing with like one hundred, like the thing you were saying about an actor being the director.

They were like, hey, yea more, yeah, more more, keep going.

She hit it at like one hundred.

It kind of felt like some of the improv exercises that you do when you're in workshop.

Okay, yeah, she at the party, she was totally insane.

It was like she was coked up, and I think.

Well, that's fitting in in the nineteen eighties though, Yes.

So she fit in better than she thought she did.

Yeah, but yeah, so they So she is trying to romance, although she doesn't understand romance.

She's trying to get the information of how this signal was sent from dan Aykroyd.

Mm hmm.

So they go to kiss on the roof, and she has to have oh yes on the satellite.

Yes, and she has to have a bag project for her what a kiss is and whatever it shows on the video screen she does to him so like it shows like lions licking each other's ears, and so she lifts his ears and like it's the sequence on for a very long time.

Yeah, I was thinking about that.

I was like they needed to cut like sixty seconds from.

The okay, good, we're all on the same page.

I thought, It's like, this is a really charming twelve minute sequence.

Yes, yeah, this is this is where it's like no, no, keep going, keep keep going further, like more is more.

I think that's that's that's the theme of this movie.

More is more.

More is this movie has got this weird thing that it does where it's like the timing is oddly rushed throughout the whole film, So it seems weird that, like you would spend so much extra time on this on the kissing thing.

Mm hmmm, because later they do the exact same thing, but with sex, Like she goes back to his house and she's like, let's talk in your bedroom and he's like, you want to go in the bedroom and she's like, yeah, that's where we should talk and he's like, you want to have sex and she's like, what sex?

I got to go to the bathroom and in the back through him.

The whole thing plays out again with Bag projecting for her what is sex and like putting out tapes of like Debbie does Dallas and Hustler magazines and she's like, Okay, I get it.

I know what sex is, and I'm gonna do it.

And she goes out to him, and another very long sequence of her just approaching him, Yeah, the wind blowing on her.

Uh huh, in slow motion, in slow.

Motion and fan for like three whole minutes.

I was, I was so I am.

I am a Dana Akroyd fan, but I am not ready to see him as a sexual being.

No, And this movie just slathers you with that, like Yes, and other movies there are references that he has had sex or he might have sex, but I'm not ready to see him begin having sex.

I am uncomfortable with this.

This was new for me with my dan ackroid experience.

I was fine with it.

I thought it was funny the way he kept practicing, how he was going to beckon over, how he was going to beckon over Kim Basinger through the bed as if.

But then when Kim Basier comes up, becomes very clear that is not at all.

What is what is going to happen?

Yeah, So they do the sex and she is into it.

She is delighted by it and thrilled.

And he's like, I think I just did it normally and she's like, oh man, that was amazing.

She could have been doing this this whole time.

Uh.

They make a joke about the Sheen family.

I was surprised how much that's still held up.

Uh huh.

And then he goes to sleep with a big smile on his face.

While she explores his house, she sucks up the information from his computer.

She reads by shoving her forearm into a.

Book, into various books.

Yes, and she watches Jimmy Duranty on TV.

Uh huh.

Yeah, which which is so accessibly wonderful to her.

Mm hmm, which I find unrealistic.

I also find that unrealistic.

Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna come and swing in as movie champion here, all right.

You know how she thought that dan Ackroyd was like so good at sex because it was her first time having sex.

Jimmy Duranty is her first experience with television and music, So to her, television and music are great because that is her only experience to draw from.

Okay, fair enough, this is the one scenario I would accept.

Like, had she started off with Hamilton, I have to imagine she probably wouldn't have found Jimmy Duranty that particularly exciting.

M right.

Yeah, if she had started with the Marx Brothers or oh yeah, or even like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.

I forgot they didn't have Hamilton, And.

Yeah, that's right.

But okay, I am.

I am convinced by your scenario.

Because I invoked dan Akroyd as a sexual being and you're like, oh, now I get it, Oh now.

I get it.

The the holy trinity of dan Aykroyd, Jimmy Duranty and something.

In the morning.

The daughter is thrilled.

She is so stoked hooked up.

Yeah, that they both went to Poundtown.

Yeah, she can't enough.

Jesus glad she was there to be a part of it.

Yeah.

In the next room, I will come out in defense of this particular scene.

Based on what we know of Dan Ackroyd and his relationship with Alison Hannigan up to this point, he's not even aware that she's hit puberty yet, so the chances that he's given her the sex talk is probably pretty low.

Yes, So I imagine she's just probably excited that there's someone who came over and stayed here, because while she might not get all the dirty details, she knows that if they stay that's good.

Yeahs By the enthusiasm of her date with Minnie Redhead Seth Green, I feel like she's probably hit puberty at this point.

No, you're almost certainly correct, Quickside Tangent.

How much Seth Green already sounded like Seth Green at that height?

Yeah, at conception, Yeah.

Was incredible to me.

He is he is pre pubescent Seth Green, because he is tiny, like she is towering over him, towering over him.

Yes, And he even says to her, Oh good, you were flats.

Yeah, I didn't even catch that.

He is fully formed Seth Green at this point, he did not.

Puberty played no part in forming Seth Green.

Yeah.

All he did was like grow like a couple of feet, Like that was it.

Yeah, yeah, it was not enough by his own admission.

Yeah.

Uh.

So she confesses to them that she has to leave, and uh, Dan Akroyd's like, no, let's get married instead, and she goes for a walk with her purse and goes to a baseball stadium where she meets with her council, which, in.

A there's a weird wardrobe change between when she's walking barefoot out of the house with one of those weird flight helmets on to when she appears on the field that just isn't explained.

It's just like she she's leaving the house and she's practically wearing like his shirt and like an airman's hat, and then she appears on the field and she's wearing like a sensible yellow dress with like a sun hat or something.

I don't remember she's wearing a sun hat at that point.

I think she just has the yellow dress.

But like, that's the feel that I got with sun hat for some reason, and like, at no point do we see her change or the bag printed dress.

Oh, the bag printed her dress.

We've probably forgot to mention that.

Yeah, bag Maine, But like we didn't see that this time, like we did between.

The contor of the movie.

I feel like there was probably a scene in between that they just cut.

Yeah.

I can't imagine that anything was cut from this movie.

So while she's convening with her council, they're like, kill the daughter, and she's like, no, I've no marry him.

And she's like what is marry him?

And they're like they do a bunch of bits about how marriage has changed over the years, and they're like, you cook him dinner and make him a martini.

Oh no, wait that's a couple of decades old.

Sorry, Yeah, this is this is the first hint that the Alien Council might be not totally cool.

Yeah, yeah, go straight for kill the daughter.

I uh huh.

It didn't even occur to me as foreshadow because I've seen the movie so many times.

Yep.

Uh.

And then she's like, Okay, we're gonna get married and the next thing we're doing is having a wedding.

Yeah, this movie takes place so fast.

Yes, this whole movie takes place over like three days.

Yeah, they're they're full.

They have a full home wedding, like they must have announced this twelve hours ago, like the evening, the previous evening, and then they've got a full wedding.

Everyone's dressed up, everything's set up.

And then after the wedding, which feels like a week later, everyone is in casual they're just kind of walking casually around the house.

And then aliceon Hannigan is going out on a date, you know, yeah, and I'm like, wait a minute, did I miss something?

This feels like And then and then when she goes off with babys Seth Green, they talk about, no, no, this is our honeymoon, this is we just had a wedding today.

Come on, we've got to go.

Yeah, must have sex again.

Yeah yeah, And the daughter's like, go for it, dad.

But time is weird in this movie because the little girl goes on a date, which like they were going to a dance, it seems because you bought her a corsage and she's wearing a fancy dress and this and that and they are totally unsupervised.

But when they get home.

Everybody is sleeping.

So how late at night were they going out?

Yeah?

Yeah, So I feel like I have to backtrack just a little bit, just just for timing purposes.

So first we start getting the first disagreement between Celeste as played by Kim Basinger and Bag because Bag doesn't want to be left away from her during the wedding, and so Bag causes some trouble with the dog.

Meanwhile, they get it an argument when Celesti is in the dressing room and she's drinking d batteries just straight from the hardware store, because that's how this alien eats is draining batteries.

And Allison had a crops a peak of this and brings it up to dan Aykroyd and be like, you're being weird.

Leave it alone, back off, Yeah, just shut up and let me have my wedding.

And she does two house and head against credit.

She's like, all right, we'll keep it cool.

And then uh, Dan awkward goes to bed and uh Kim Basinger goes out to go shopping to make.

She goes to the grocery store.

Yep, yeah, so she came a dollar.

Of groceries, which he tries to pay for with a diamond.

H Yeah, a diamond, and then a thousand dollar bill and then a smaller thousand dollars bill.

Yep, this movie's got jokes.

I have to say.

The physical jokes are are are much better than the than the yes, than the dialogue ones.

H And the daughter comes home from the date and sees her cooking and like pulling eggs out of boiling water with her bare hands, and like handling a tray of bacon with her bare hands and.

Drain battery from the car.

Yeah, so Steve has gotten his job back at this point.

Yes, Bag has made a phone call to Steve's boss as.

Carl Sagan impersonation, and obviously Carl Sagan has a lot of juice in the community and is able to convince this guy, hey, dad tried willfully destroyed their entire lab.

Do you guys know who did the impersonation of Carl Sagan?

No, yeah, it was the guy who like half the Simpsons voices.

Harry, Sure, Oh that's great.

Yeah.

I'm not sure if this is pre or post Simpsons, but I know it was around the same time.

Right, Yeah, I think it was just barely pre Simpsons.

I think Simpsons was like late eighties, like eighty eight, eighty eight, eighty nine.

Yeah, so it'd been around the same year as this moving Wow.

And so Carlsing gives because Dan I write his job back.

And despite the fact that it is still their honeymoon, Kim Vasinger has made an entire diner's worth.

She just cooks the entire menu in the kitchen and starts bringing it out for breakfast.

Great bit, and Alison Hannigan's like, see.

Weird, weird Exhibit twelve.

Weird.

And then she's like, Okay, you have to go to work, and he's like, but it's our honeymoon, and she's like, no, go to work, yep.

And then while he's at work, she has a confrontation with Alison Hannigan where Alison Hannigan sees first Monster.

Yeah, First Monster pins her to the ceiling and steals the bark from the dog and basically says she doesn't care about Steve.

She's gonna leave as soon as he replicates the signal, and Alison Hannigan's like, but you're gonna break his heart.

And at this point she is sobbing and sobbing and screaming and she's stuck to the ceiling.

Yep.

Yeah.

I don't know how common this was, but I feel like I remember my baseline of the eighties horror was deep water and getting stuck to the ceiling.

Those were like the two things that you had.

It was like serial killers.

Deep water and getting stuck to the ceiling.

Yeah, that was mid to late eighties.

Early eighties is like quicksand maybe even like late seventies quick huge thing.

But yeah, yeah, I think everything I think thanks to Poltergeist, small children crying on the ceiling.

Became a yeah.

Yeah.

Uh So dan Aykroyd comes home and Alison Hannigan tries to explain to him, so she gets mad and he won't listen to her, so she gets mad and rides away on her bike.

And to stop her from getting killed in a car accident, uh, Kim Basinger uses bag to teleport her through the station wagon and Alison Hannigan immediately forgives her.

You revealed yourself to save my life.

Now they're on the same team.

Yeah, to the point where like, not even not even a minute later, Kim Basinger is like tucking her into bed.

Yeah, and I'm like, it's it's day.

Why are you talking her into bed?

It's four pm.

Yeah, you guys are all about to go to this lab in like not even three minutes.

Why, uh huh.

But so Bag revealed that her that Kim Basinger's made and she didn't know this before.

But they're supposed to also once they do the transmission and fix their gravity and fix their civilization with this transmission that they are supposed to as a precaution blow up Earth.

Yeah, just in case, just in case, because it could be a threat eventually.

Sure, so they just to speed up the end of the movie, they go to the lab.

Dan Ackroyd realizes the trick with the buttons and he clips a little thing onto the I kept calling it the collider, but it's not a collider.

It's a satellite dish.

Yeah, and it's like a satellite dish.

And then it's hooked up to like some weird I keep calling it a magnetron, but that's not right either.

Yeah, it's a science citron.

It's a science machine.

And they replicate the signal.

But then Bag wants to destroy Earth, so she calls the council and convinces them by doing a Jimmy Duranty impression that Earth is worth saving.

To be fair, though they are unconvinced.

They are unconvinced, so again, the second most realistic thing to happen in the movie.

I do like that they get rid of Bag by throwing them into that giant spencer's gifts of static electricity that's happening in the in the Ragnatron room.

I will say that scene is super scary though, because that eye just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

The entire cast is getting backing further and further away, and I'm like, this actually might destroy Earth right now.

I don't remember this part being the spooky.

Yeah.

It is interesting though that Bag kind of becomes a villain, you know, and originally it's like the cute sidekick, and that it becomes kind of the the most dangerous thing in the movie.

Yeah.

I guess at a certain point you do need an antagonist.

Yeah, yeah, you need you need steaks.

So they do decide based on the power of how good a sneeze feels not to destroy Earth and to take John Lovett's with them instead of Kim Besinger as their like Earth ambassador to teach them about the ways of Earth.

He grahames his Rolls Royce and his.

Reward is women.

And I also feel like I could have used with I could have used fifteen more minutes of John Levet's trying to get his Rolls Royce onto the spaceship.

At this point it was already like ten minutes long.

It just felt so dragged on, and it's like, well, can I take my It's not like, oh and I'll and look, you know what, I'll take my Royce.

And then it would have been fun to cut to him driving the Rolls Royce onto the ship, but instead there's this debate where they're's like, well, yeah we could do it.

Okay, great, I'm gonna go get it.

And then he gets into his car and he starts like it's so drawn out.

Yeah, drawn out.

And this is not this is not a short movie.

This is not a movie that they had to pad it out to make it feature length.

No.

No, this hour fort I think is where it was.

Yeah.

Uh So they go home and the daughter's like, hey, do you guys want to play basketball?

And they're like no, we're gonna go upstairs and bone and she's like, oh, I get wink wing, but kem basing her float search into the air so she can slam dunk, and then.

E wanted to be able to dunk yep.

And then we end on John Lovett's playing the piano with all his sexy women.

Mm hmm.

Yes, Which is the true moral of the story, is that men did schlubby.

Men deserve women sexy women because of the women, because they want them.

You know.

In hindsight, While I enjoyed this movie as a child, I feel like this may be contributing to in cell culture.

So maybe I should not tell people to watch this movie.

So on a scale of one magical bag to ten magical bags that have guyball monsters inside, how many magical bags do you rate this movie?

Robert?

What would be your review as a child and what would be your review now?

Is My review as a child was this is a ten out of ten movie because as a child I had very little room for nuance.

This is the proverbial Jimmy Duranty.

This is the Jimmy Durranty of movies.

Yeah, and so as an adult, I'm probably rating this closer to like a six and a half out of ten, maybe a low seven.

Like I enjoyed myself rewatching it.

I didn't feel like I wasted my time.

I somehow felt emotional stakes during the parts that I was supposed to and grossed out during the parts that I probably wasn't supposed to.

So yeah, I I I don't think it was so I don't.

I didn't feel like it was waste of time watching it.

So it clears my uh it clears my five for sure.

But yeah, I think you nailed it.

I think six point five is exactly the right score to give it.

I enjoyed it.

I liked watching it.

I was like, what the fuck is gonna happen next?

I have no goddamn clue.

It could be anything at this point, and I would not be surprised.

And uh yeah, I thought it was a fun movie that I've never seen.

So but you know, at the same time, I've never seen it.

It felt very familiar.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not breaking new ground, no, but it's it's a fun combination of with Dan Aykroyd and Kim Beziger, Alison Hannigan and John Lovetts.

I have to say, like the cast was was pretty stacked for an eighties movie.

Yeah, yeah, even if it was stacked with people that were even if it wasn't stacked with people that were necessarily famous at the time.

Uh huh, Right, So what do you rate it.

Nathan, Well, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a little bit more of a Debbie Downer.

Okay, So I'm I'm.

Thank God for like the point five like scale of one to ten is I'm going to give it a four point five.

Uh.

There were a lot of enjoyable moments, but it's not necessarily a ride that I I enjoyed that I'm going to go on again anytime soon.

I'm glad to have been watched it.

I don't know if I was glad all the time.

But yeah, that's that's.

My cuts as a filmmaker.

Are there things that you were looking at and you're like, oh, yeah, they shouldn't have done that.

Honestly, it's it's we just there's nothing that I haven't talked about already at this point, just like the bumpiness of this of the script and and what was included and what wasn't, Like, you know, honestly, like if if Dan Ackroyd was just a if it wasn't the plot saying no, you must disbelieve it in your daughter and at all costs unless it's proven physically Alison, like the weird sexual chemistry between him and his daughter.

And then and then yeah, just just a couple of little course corrections where the director maybe going a little too far with some stuff.

But yeah, so you you would say this is potentially a salvageable film.

Yeah, I think it could have been a salvageable film.

Yeah, but they did not salvage it.

Salvage excellent.

What's your deep cut recommendation, Nathan, Oh, So, if.

You're into alien women, which we all are copulating with down on their luck men, then I have the movie for you.

It's called Under the Skin.

H okay never it is a deeply disturbing and dark film.

So if you, let's say, if you created the realistic version of this movie.

So this isn't like species, This is so Scarlett Johansson in twenty thirteen film is as a being that has arrived on Earth and she's nothing is described.

It's so mysterious and but she clearly kills these men but needs to copulate with them, and nothing good happens.

There's not a happy ending where we are left with, Yeah, we are left with the mystery and darkness of if another entity had this mission or or need, what would that experience be?

Like?

Wow, Yeah, okay, what's your deep cut recommendation?

Robert, Okay, my deep cut recommendation is a television show that I used to watch as a child.

Once again, I watched it after most of it had been released because it was on daytime television after school.

But the show ran from nineteen eighty seven to nineteen ninety one and it was called Out of This World.

Oh I love that show.

Yeah.

Basic premise is there's this girl turns thirteen and she starts getting powers and it turns out that her dad was an alien who was voiced by Burt Reynolds and populated with his mom, and she gets some of his alien powers.

And they made four seasons out of this show.

Yeah, she stops time by touching her fingers together.

It's it is a comedy.

It's about aliens, but mostly it's just like any other living roomsit com and yet it like I was fascinated by the show.

I could not stop watching it, and they stopped making it four episodes before would have gone into syndication.

That's a bummer.

I love that.

Anything that stars Burt Reynolds as a box.

Yeah.

You don't get have to see Berth Burt Reynolds.

You just get like his outline and then his voice and that's it.

Yep, excellent, great, great one.

I love it.

I have two.

The first one it seems really obvious to me.

But seeing Willow and Oz together, yeah, as tiny babies made me want to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I felt the same way.

I almost picked, and I was like, Chrissy is almost certainly going to say that one.

I'm going to leave that.

Yeah, But I would say my real deep cut recommendation is the nineteen ninety three Mike Myers masterpiece.

So I Married an Axe Murderer.

Oh yeah, that's a fun one.

Yeah, that's one that I haven't revisited since the nineties.

Yeah.

Rocket thinks it's funny.

Okay, I think it's funny.

It's funny enough.

Yeah, So I think it holds up a little bit, holds up a little.

Bit like just doing a one man show.

For most of it, it's it's good, yeah, which is.

Which Yeah, I mean that was the thing back then, you know, mm hmm.

Although there is a scene in that movie where where Stephen Wright is flying a plane that I was.

I was a big Stephen Wright fan when that when that movie came out, so I was super into it.

Yeah, and he's like, and they're flying a plane in the storm.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good part.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for being here with us.

At the end, Robert, where can people see you perform?

You can see me perform at the Neighborhood Comedy Theater in Mesa downtown.

I feel like the addresses like Robson and Maine.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, come see me.

I'm I'm I'm sometimes good.

I am I am out of this world's player, and that I am about a six point five to four point five depending on who's watching.

I'm super personal.

You are welcome to come say hi to me.

But otherwise I sometimes put funny stuff on Blue Sky.

My handle there is Darth Feta like f Eta instead of my actual name, So come you can come see occasionally me.

Put down takes there.

Very excellent, wonderful.

And Nathan, where can people support your Filmmakingsqueishy.

Studios dot com for all sorts of movies and various.

Other stuff wonderful and you can find me on my other podcast, Gank That Drank, a supernatural drinking game podcast, also a true story FM product.

Ohe Me Too.

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