This Day in Theaters: Oct. 7, 1988

Alien Nation (1988)

What if Los Angeles became flooded with a new population of people causing the current residents to complain of an increase in crime as well as a decrease in job opportunities? No, I'm not talking about Latinos. These aliens come from out space and happen to be white with large heads covered in purple blotches instead of hair. The premise of "Alien Nation" revolves around two police detectives, one your typical pissed off white guy (James Caan) and the other an alien newcomer (Mandy Patinkin), being partnered together and working on solving a homicide possibly linked to the alien underworld. Most of it plays out like a typical buddy cop film with the two detectives having to adapt to each others ways of both policing and living. World's apart, literally, in the beginning the two come together to discover a new drug being peddled by a group on conspiring aliens and learn more about themselves along the way.

Rita Kempley of the Washington Post:

"'Alien Nation' wants to be 'In the Heat of the Night' as science fiction, but it's neither morally instructive nor prophetic. It proves a lumbering marriage of action and sci-fi that alienates both audiences. It's too dull for one and too dumb for the other. But worst of all, it violates its own principles when its only black character, Caan's first partner, is blown away in a Slag Town shootout. If they really meant business, the movie makers would have chosen pepper over salt." 

Roger Ebert seems to agree with Kempley:

"The movie is simply a failure of imagination. Nobody looked at the screenplay and observed that it didn't try hard enough, that it had no surprises, that it didn't attempt to delight its audiences with twists and turns on the phoned-in plotline. 'Alien Nation' feels like a movie made by people who have seen a lot of movies, but don't think the audience has"

"I bet you didn't know I was in 'The Godfather'?"

I have to agree with the critics on a few aspects of their reviews. For starters this film took a pretty interesting premise, aliens living among humans but being treated like immigrants, and just kind of rolled it into a police procedural film. The writers had a chance to take a few risks or throw some twists in their but it plays out by the book. They laid a few little metaphors about immigration, racism, and other sociological issues but they served more as a way to give the characters some motivation or till 10 minutes of screen time. They could've used the police angle as a way to serve as a vehicle for exposing us to exactly what the problems were between the two cultures instead of making the movie another one about cops out for the bad guys. The other part I agree with was how easy it was to predict. We've all seen this before so why should I watch "Alien Nation" instead of "Lethal Weapon"? Sure it looked good but without too much substance that will only take you so far. The only way I would say to check this one out would be to further recommend the TV series and made for TV films that proceeded the 1988 film as they are quite good for their standards. If you don't plan on that you can skip this one until they, I hope, remake it.

IMDb Score: 6.1

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 56%