Starman (1984)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

hyped garbage

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A morality tale with a definite Spielbergian touch. Jeff Bridges is an alien who assume the form of Karen Allen's late husband. Bridges has been brought down by accident from his UFO and must be picked up by the mother ship at Crater National Monument in Arizona. The problem is that he's crash landed somewhere in Wisconsin, so he must more or less kidnap Allen and have her accompany him to the rendezvous site, with the police and the U. S. Army hot on their trail.As a kind of extraterrestrial anthropologist, Bridges must learn the speech and customs of his host country little by little. This leads to the expected but amusing sequences of his learning how to eat in a diner, how to give someone the finger, how to punch back when he's hit, and so forth.Of course Bridges comes to acquire all "the feelings" of her late husband's body, the one he's appropriated, and -- well, I guess I don't have to draw you a picture of what happens after that.It's a feel-good movie with lots of smiles and warmth. The holes in the plot may be the size of the crater in Crater National Monument but who cares? Majestic organ chords strike resonant notes in the viewers' cockles. The clutter of junk at the bottom of the crater -- left a hundred years ago by diggers who thought the meteor might be made of precious metal -- is carefully avoided in all the shots so as to promote the feeling of a pristine natural feature. He's as innocent as a new-born babe which, in a cultural sense, he is. But for no particular reason, the agents of social control are in hot pursuit. They seem to hate him. They're led by a major suit, the reliable and familiar Richard Jaekel, whose character's name is George Fox. I don't know if it was intentional -- probably not -- but in the old military phonetic alphabet "George" stood for the letter "G", and "Fox" stood for "F". "George Fox" was an offhand and polite way of telling someone to get lost.

This romantic road trip film took me by surprise, and is celluloid proof that Carpenter could make a Sci-fi film that doesn't scare the poop out of kids. The plot involves an alien, played by Jeff Bridges, taking the form of Karen Allen's dead husband and asking her to drive him across state to his spaceship. Bridges is marvellous in his role as the curious and likable alien – a well- deserved Oscar nomination was given to him. In fact, he's the only actor in a John Carpenter movie to be nominated for an Oscar. Bridges takes the role as an occasion to give us some sweetly affecting characterisation and it showcases his charm and precision as an actor. Though on paper this looks like a very sill movie, it turns out to be of the most touching and funny love stories from the 80's. Carpenter purists may look down upon this film for its family- friendly appeal and PG rating but he showed real maturity in Starman by keeping an emphasising on close human emotions rather than shocks and special effects. As a lot of alien films do, Starman asks questions about our nature as human beings and our impact on planet Earth. It does so in a way, however, without getting preachy. It's moving, in fact, as is the romance. And this is coming from a guy who generally despises romantic films. Best Scene: Like most Carpenter films, Starman has a memorable ending. In this case, the film closes on Allen's face, full of wonder, as she looks up at the mothership taking Bridges home. It is accompanied by a poignant score which Carpenter, a rarity for him, wisely did not compose. Another thing I like about the ending is that it does not allow itself to get bogged down in politics – for all we know the government may have shot her a minute after the credits started rolling, or she may have become a drunk hobo 20 years down the line and jumped off of a bridge. But we don't need to know that.

I don't know if it's cynical to describe "Starman" as "E.T." for grownups, adults, or what-have-you, but the comparison's certainly there. Which isn't to badmouth "E.T.", goodness knows I hold that movie in high regard. But "Starman" is definitely about healing, either literally with Jeff Bridges and his mystical marbles or helping Karen Allen to grieve her husband's death and start feeling again. Both actors are something to see here. Bridges transforms himself into an innocent, almost mechanized presence as Starman learns the cultures and barbarism of humans. Allen has the market cornered in hopelessly lost and numb. Just seeing here try to define love to an alien is heartbreaking. There is sadness inherent in this movie, but it's also deeply sentimental and will touch even the most hardened.A fine movie indeed.8/10

John Carpenter's STARMAN is a sympathetic star-crossed romance between an alien aka. Starman (Bridges) and an earth woman Jenny (Allen), a rare item in his otherwise horror and action packed works, it is my second film from him, after the disappointingly topsy-turvy BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986, 5/10). First of all, it is a cruel joke on our earthlings, we set off a welcome message into the outer space, and some unspecified highly-intelligent species responses by sending an explorer to our planet, however, the first thing humans do is shooting the vehicles down, then hunting down the e.t. in order to put him on the operation table for dissection. But don't worry, as annoying as the authoritarian NSA chief and the military ostentation and extravagance, things will not descend to that ground. Jenny is recently widowed and still overindulges in the then-sweet-but-now-tormenting memories of his dead husband Scott, so the intrusion of Starman who regenerates himself into a human form of Scott through his hair kept in Jenny's photo album actually gives an impossible chance for Jenny to fall in love with Scott again, thus despite the initial terror to witness the metamorphosis of an unearthly creature turning into Scott, Jenny accepts him almost instantly as subconsciously she knows that her dream comes true in a supernatural version. The pair drives across the country to reach the picking-up location in Arizona, where a mother-ship will take Starman back as it has planned.En route, the affecting binding progress between them takes a lion's share of the film and romance burgeons inevitably and a nice job done by generously allowing Starman some time to learn in his new form as a male human in this three-day span, the film never intend to be a taut action piece or a CGI-ridden arena for Starman to show off his superpower other than when the plot requires, emotion always comes first, even poetically, which one might find it unexpectedly against Carpenter's grain, Jenny and Starman are each other's savior, once they builds the trust and affections, they are inseparable. As corny as that he resuscitates her from death, cures her infertility and gives her a baby boy, whereas she has the relentless will power to bring him to the appointed venue, to eventually save his life, Carpenter and his two leads pull it off satisfactorily. Bridges garners a surprising Oscar-nomination here, he demonstrates a primitive method as a newcomer habituating, mimicking and grasping human behavior, impressively carries on his otherworldliness through the journey with advanced nuances in gesticulation and language capacity. Allen brings about a force of momentum in her more mundane part, overwhelmed by the frisson of regaining and losing again of her true love, she and Bridges share many intimately heartfelt moments in this fanciful tall-tale, its CGI effects inescapably seem dated, but the kernel of its message - to evoke the basic humanity within us, leaves viewers a somewhat palatable taste which injects the movie a vital strength to be finely appreciated.