My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)
Director: Richard Benjamin
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
In a last-ditch attempt to save her planet from imminent destruction, alien Celeste (Basinger) arrives on earth to seek the help of widowed scientist Steve (Aykroyd). Her identity is a secret, which results in confusion when Steve falls for and marries what he believes to be a beautiful and naive European; his teenage daughter (Hannigan) is none too pleased with her conniving stepmother, particularly after catching her slurping on battery fluid and talking to an ugly creature in her handbag. The film offers several entertaining sequences, but Splash it ain't, for while that film took a similar scenario and beautifully conveyed romantic notions of innocence, this is marred by cruel and juvenile gags. Hence an overlong scene which introduces Celeste to the experience of kissing. Worse still, comedian Lovitz plays Steve's truly tedious playboy brother. With earthlings like him, intelligent forms of life would be better advised to stay in their own galaxy.Author: CM
Cast & crew
Director: Richard Benjamin
Producer: Ronald Parker, Franklin R Levy
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Kim Basinger, Jon Lovitz, Alyson Hannigan, Joseph Maher, Seth Green, Wesley Mann, Juliette Lewis full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 108 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.



What do you think?
Post your review now