For Your Consideration: MAC AND ME (1988)

I found this little treasure of awfulness and decided to investigate further. It got missed on my first pass through childhood, so here we are, over 25 years later and it demands to be resurfaced.

If you're not familiar with it, here's the synopsis:

A troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape Earth and return to his home-world.

If you're wondering why I cut and paste the movie synopsis from E.T.'s IMDB page, its because this movie is a total ripoff of that. And that's all you need to know.

 

This movie will tell you that its good natured and often funny. This is not the case.

E.T. had the capacity to be loveable.  These aliens are straight out of someone's drug induced feverish nightmare.

GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME.

A NASA probe came and sucked them up. That's how they came to Earth.  Trust me, its just as stupid as it sounds.

Even these scientists are like, "Wait, what?"

Mac and Me felt that Elliott from E.T. wasn't sympathetic enough, so we have Eric, who is in a wheelchair and who's father has just passed away. What happened, you ask? Given how horrifying these aliens are, apparently the movie thought we'd be dealing with enough as it was.

Based on the family photo next to Eric, it seems Dad's probably just hiding out in Latin America until whatever ugly incident  that he caused blows over.

Probably the most horrifying thing that happens in this movie is watching this kid helplessly roll down the mountain...

...and off a cliff.

Unfortunately, that's not the most offensive thing in this movie. That honor goes to non stop product placement.

No one drinks anything but Coke.

The aliens will never leave...now that they've found Coke.

E.T. at least made Reese's Pieces into a "sometimes food". Mac pretty much just starts freebasing Coke.

The action of the scene is all background. Coke would like to politely remind you that its accepting new followers daily.

Quick! No time to waste - pump these aliens full of Coke, STAT!

It didn't stop with Coke.  McDonald's got itself a full 15 minute commercial halfway through this movie.

 This film had no good intentions.  NONE.

Should you have a fear of clowns, the sound of Ronald McDonalds' laughter will grip your soul and take you to a deep dark place.

And then the product placements just got weird....

Well done Clearblue. Well done.

Eric and Mac, now disguised as a bear go to the world's most choreographed birthday party, sponsored of course by McDonald's. Tons of people turned out for this party....

...and practiced for hours before hand.

Eric came, sat in his wheelchair as usual and got to watch his new buddy show off his working legs in front of him.

Anytime you see an alien ravenously reading the LA Times, know that they are out to destroy us all.

Tell me, does this scene remind you of anything?

Nope, I got nothin'. If someone could enlighten me, I'd really appreciate it.

 There's a scene where the kids try to escape from the law with Mac and his alien family and end up in a grocery store. Its disturbing and upsetting for a number of reasons. First of all, as much as they try to pass this up as comedy, these aliens just look like deformed humans that are naked.

Secondly, people have two reactions upon seeing them. Casual observance and hysteria....

Queue the security guard with an actual gun. The alien responds by taking the gun and discharging it in a store full of adults and children, putting the whole "good natured and often funny romp" claim into question.

The conflict gets taken outside where, logically, more shots are fired which causes the supermarket and a nearby gas station to explode. Eric is caught int he explosion and dies.

That's right. Our hero, already dealt a crappy hand in life, is killed by a freak accident where the aliens he was trying to help, blew up a supermarket that he was in close vicinity to.

All is not entirely lost - they come and raise him from the dead. Your move, E.T.

 Not that our immigration system wasn't broken enough as it is, Mac's alien family is granted citizenship in exchange for bringing a American boy back from the dead.  There's no way the thousands of immigrants who are trying to legally get citizenship aren't feeling the slightest bit of rage.

Also, Eric may be revived from the dead, but that doesn't mean he gets his legs back.

E.T. probably would have healed his legs. Just sayin'.

Here's what I imagine the last page of the script reads:

"Our family drives off, looking all American (1950s) and ready to move on with the next phase - everyone will no doubt accept them and not even question what lurks under their weirdly fitting clothes."

And then they leave us with this threat, which thankfully never came to fruition.

You're welcome, America.