Review of Earth to Echo (2014) by Dylan M — 07 Sep 2015

Movie Review.

Earth to Echo:

Okay, yeah, I bought it on blu-ray yesterday. There, I admitted it. The disc was in 'like new' shape and I was naturally curious about the film. I have to say, taking the RT score into mind, 'Echo' was better than I thought. BUT, it still doesn't offer much that I'd recommend to the casual viewer. The acting is fine, you know, the characters have just enough time to get us to believe that they're close friends. But I would have liked to have seen their friendship grow stronger. Here's the thing as the film is ending, one of the boys narrates about how Echo [the alien in the cover art] taught them that distance doesn't matter and that best friends are friends no matter how far apart. (A) That's not true and (B) [this is the one that matters] I didn't really see that lesson/message/whatever in the film. One of the boys is a foster kid and has abandonment issues or something, now That could have made for a better reoccuring element in the movie since "Earth to Echo" takes a page from "The Goonies" with the whole "y'all gotta move out of your homes even though you don't want to leave" thing. I mean, in the film, one of the boys mentions the abandonment thing to his friend around the halfway mark and I was like, "oh, you're actually going in this direction? Keep going, build on it," and they didn't. There's a girl who eventually joins the boys in their mission to get Echo to his ship, yeah, she felt so out of place. It wasn't her performance or anything, it's just that she wasn't a part of the main friendship circle. "The man" is, of course, after Echo and that whole angle slowed the film down--if they had removed "da man" and included the girl with the main pack of friends, oh, and if they had kept the first act going [finding pieces for Echo's ship]. Then "Earth to Echo" would have had something going for it because no matter how cute Echo is or how fancy the visuals are--it still can't escape from the shadow of E.T--which in turn, takes away the initial "wow, this is unique" feeling I had. There was a scene where the kids are driving a truck and I started humming the E.T theme, I say that because it definitely has that vibe (and I'm not sure that's a good thing). But while I'm drawing comparisons to E.T, there is no sense of urgency to be found [hey, a pun. Kind of. You know. 'Cause, umm, "Earth to Echo" is a found-footage film. Shut up!] and I only bring that up because the final act of E.T gets so many feels going simultanously during the final act that it's almost as if you're there. Despite the use of phones, cameras, and spy glasses to provide close-up shots of the alien [and times, a first-person view from the little guy's perspective], "Earth to Echo" still couldn't get me to connect with Echo. The alien's cute and that's it--it just seems like the audience is obligated to become invested in this film at times. There just wasn't any sort of... okay, have you ever watched a movie ["Argo" comes to mind] where you're about to fall out of your seat because you're so close to the edge as you're biting your nails and hoping (over and over) that the characters don't get caught? The opposite is true here. I've said enough. Didn't hate the film. Didn't love it. The actors pretty much carry the film. It's an easy viewing though not exactly engaging. In short: I liked the overall package, but there were just too many small points to deduct and those minuses ultimately added up.