140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW
Forget the totally undeserved bad reviews, this is a solid tale for modern smartphone era kids with the tone of the great 1980’s adventures.
Spoiler-free Movie Review of Earth to Echo:
Yikes! The vitriol aimed at this cute little movie is a little hard to come to terms with. I didn’t read one single review of the movie, but I kind of didn’t need to. Every time I looked up images or quotes or cast info, all I kept seeing was “shameless rip-off”, “uninspired”, “derivative”, and far worse. You people get that this is a kids movie, yes?
Part of the nastiness I attribute to our overly critical natures and simple schadenfreude. The films provenance is troubled, as it was developed by Walt Disney Studios who delayed release several times before they finally sold it off to Relativity Media, who then did some additional shooting. When you hear that sort of thing your antenna goes up and you usually assume that a project was thrown out with the trash as the studio didn’t believe in it. In this case, it seems to be more a case of being orphaned when there was a change in studio leadership. This sort of thing happens all the time in development; an executive who championed your project gets shifted and the new exec sees no upside to continuing with the inherited project (if it fails it’s their fault, if it succeeds the former exec gets the credit). It just happens much less frequently once a film is ready for release. With that news, however, everyone smelled blood in the water and proceeded to write the movie off, sharpening their knives in preparation of getting to rip it apart.
Most of the anger, though, seems focused on the perception that this movie rips off E.T. and is unoriginal. Stop right there – E.T. isn’t one of the finest films ever made because of how original it is. It was far from the first film to tread on this territory. (Spielberg himself took three tries to make the movie: Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the unmade sorta-sequel Night Skies. Another lesser-known fact is that both E.T. & Close Encounters were both dogged by claims of plagiarism of an unproduced script by Satyajit Ray called The Alien that made the rounds in Hollywood for years.)
No, E.T. was brilliant and remains powerful because of its great heart, how amazing the relationships are, and how touching, magical and awe-inspiring it was. It’s also 32 years old. It’s a great story of friendship with a wonderful sense of adventure and kid empowerment, so why don’t modern kids deserve their own story?
Think about it; how meaningful is the movie to today’s kids? I know we use words like timeless when discussing classic films, but oftentimes we’re kidding ourselves. Just because a movie is wonderful does not make it timeless. E.T. is very dated, and that’s not a criticism any more than applying the term to a Cold War film. While the picture is exactly as great as it was 32 years ago, it was a long time ago and utilizes outdated technology for major plot points.
We love the movies of our childhood and sometimes put them on pedestals where we can’t see that they’ve gotten a bit worn, and then we can’t see why everyone doesn’t view the films today exactly the way we did then.
The filmmakers responsible for Earth to Echo have acknowledged a desire to create a movie with the adventurous spirit of those great 80’s movies and they have succeeded, while imbuing the film with a modern sensibility that will better resonate with its target audience of today’s kids. (And I reject the idea that modern films can simply update the old stories for kids who won’t appreciate older films. My daughter has seen E.T. – she loved it. And she loved this one. There’s nothing mutually exclusive about it – good, fun movies will be seen for what they are and will hold up if they are well-made. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to also have newer pictures that infuse the same spirit of wonder and adventure.)
The film centers around a group of best friends from a neighborhood in suburban Las Vegas that is being demolished to make way for a highway. (Amazingly I didn’t spot any Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy gags in here, which seems like a called shot.) As the families make their moving plans, phones around the diminishing neighborhood begin to act strangely, displaying seemingly nonsensical electronic noise. Of course our heroes, Tuck, Munch and Alex, detect a pattern in the signal and resolve to have one last adventure before they all are forced to go their separate ways. Over a crowded 24 hours, they’ll make 2 new friends – one out of this world – and get their famous last stand.
The film is shot in “found footage” format, a stylistic choice seemingly meant to resonate with a generation of smartphone users. It is largely an effective tool, although they clearly felt they needed to add some reshoots and additional non-shaky-cam footage, either to make the film more family-friendly or easier to follow, and it does make the look of the film sort of inconsistent. The basic conceit is that Tuck (played by rapper Brian “Astro” Bradley) aspires to YouTube fame and records his actions all the time through a combination of camcorders, smartphones and go-pro cams. Because of this, it makes sense that he’d get all of this footage, but it also means he and the other actors play to the camera a lot. Like any footage of people aware that they are being filmed, this is a little annoying at first, giving the film an amateurish feel, but through the course of the picture it leads to some great moments as real emotion is captured by characters who have let the omnipresence of the cameras lull them into forgetting that they are being filmed.
This premise of best friends being separated (a la Goonies) certainly is not new, but it is played out more effectively than most. There is some meaningful content here, and the picture doesn’t shy away from the emotional depth of these kids. Impressively, the found footage style really enhances the confessional feel of the moments when they let their guard down.
The desert and deserted setting factors hugely in the tone of the film as the neighborhood clears out, giving a ghost-like quality to the area and believabilty to the concept that these kids could wander around so freely at all hours.
I haven’t mentioned much about the effects of the movie as I don’t consider Earth to Echo to be a big FX picture. What it does it does well, but other than a highway chase FX scene from the trailer that was an add by the second studio, it’s not showy and I like that. In the most significant break from the movies it is accused of ripping off, the point of the picture isn’t really even about the alien – it’s a story of the friends.
I freely admit that I allowed all of the negative vibe around this movie lower my expectations dramatically before seeing Earth to Echo. For that, I thank all of the haters, because I enjoyed it possibly more as a result. It was a fun picture that surprisingly avoided too much sentimentality. It’s not cutesy and frankly doesn’t sugar coat the feelings of the teen leads or insist on everything being wrapped up nicely. Put aside the criticism that this is ripping off a 32 year old movie and go with a kid who will remind you of the simple fun of watching a story with a cute alien.
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Fail
The Representation Test Score: C (5 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
| Main Cast | Teo Halm Alex, Astro (as Brian ‘Astro’ Bradley) Tuck, Reese Hartwig Munch, Ella Wahlestedt Emma |
| Rating | PG |
| Release Date | Wed 02 Jul 2014 UTC |
| Director | Dave Green |
| Genres | Adventure, Family, Sci-Fi |
| Plot | After receiving a bizarre series of encrypted messages, a group of kids embark on an adventure with an alien who needs their help. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 91 |
| Tagline | No one will ever believe our story. |
| Writers | Henry Gayden (screenplay), Henry Gayden (story) … |
| Year | 2014 |
