Review of Earth to Echo (2014) by Timmy W — 02 Jul 2014

This movie pretty much rips off "E.T.," "Super 8," "The Goonies," and pretty much any '80s movie about a group of kids. That said, this movie pulls from these movies very well and they made a really enjoyable film.

So "Earth to Echo" is about three friends who are all forced to leave their homes because of a freeway that is supposed to be built. On their last night together, they track down some mysterious thing that is causing their phones to malfunction. The "mysterious thing" turns out to be a little alien robot that they name "Echo." Echo is damaged, and it needs the kids' help to repair the pod it came to Earth in, and then find its spaceship. This results in the kids having to travel all over the place looking for items wherever Echo leads them. Meanwhile, the kids are hunted by a group of people who also want Echo for their own reasons.

This movie, to some extent, relies on whether or not the audience likes the homages to '80s films. Personally, I didn't mind it. I thought it was neat how they took the style of these films and updated it to the 2010s. Also, the trailer for this film didn't quite do it enough justice. The trailer really made this movie feel like a blatant rip-off of "E.T." and "Super 8." Once I actually started watching the film, however, I was able to mostly forget about these other movies and just appreciate this movie for what it was. It definitely pulls from all these movies, but it seemed like this movie was still able to create an identity for itself. A very important factor in making movies that pay homage to other works is to combine a large number of works so that the final product barely resembles any one specific movie. "Earth to Echo" isn't perfect at doing that, but manages reasonably well.

The biggest strength in this movie is the main characters. All three (and later four) kids interact with each other very realistically. It's incredible that some of the best moments of this movie are when the kids are just talking. That really rare in modern movies, and in a kids' movie, no less. I was able to leave the theater remembering exactly what these characters' personalities were like. Oddly, one of the weakest aspects of this movie is Echo himself. Echo is pretty much in this movie to look cute, do some cool things, and give the kids something to do in this movie. We never really learn that much about Echo, and I feel as though that could have been remedied if this film added a few more scenes. This movie is only 89 minutes long, and an extra 15-20 minutes would have been easily enough to give Echo some character development and keep the movie length still bearable for kids.

Finally, it should be noted that this movie is done in a variation of the "found footage" style. Although the style has become a bit overdone, and this movie probably wouldn't have lost too much without it, I thought that this movie was still pretty creative with it. The film is told as a YouTube video created by Tuck, one of the protagonists who owns several cameras and makes a lot of videos, and he occasionally includes his own narration over the footage. The footage is filmed from multiple cameras and the kids' phones, which allowed the movie to have a bit of flexibility with how it executed its footage shots.

"Earth to Echo" was a really pleasant surprise. The story, while not necessarily original, was very well done, the characters were likable and relatable, there was a surprising amount of really funny moments, and the movie was smart to pull from the best movies of its genre. If you like the idea of an '80s-esque movie updated to the 2010s, you'll have a good time. If not, than this is still a worthwhile family film to take your kids to go see.