Review of Starman (1984) by Gareth R — 26 Feb 2010

When they come to Earth in films, aliens usually do one of two things: make friends, or start a war. (In special circumstances, they may try to do one and then resort to the other.) Starman is a Friendly Alien movie. It's a lot like E.T., but with a love plot and an emphasis on relationships, rather than sci-fi. Besides that, however, it's a whole heck of a lot like E.T. in every other way. Seriously, it's lawsuit similar.

This particular Friendly Alien looks like a ball of light, until it stumbles across a woman, Jenny (Karen Allen), and assumes the form of her dead husband Scott (Jeff Bridges). Awkwardness ensues, along with something resembling a kidnap scenario, but all the alien really wants is to rendez-vous with his mothership. Jenny tries to escape a few times, until she realises the visitor is a peaceful one.

I can understand her misconceptions. She first meets the creature when he looks like a baby, which then morphs horribly into a full-grown copy of her husband, wanders around naked and points a gun at her. But she comes to appreciate him, or warm to him a little, which leads to an inevitable (yet still unimaginably creepy) love scene later on.

Where Starman distinguishes itself is in focussing on Jenny's relationship with the alien, and her gradual change of affection for him (rather than the army guys clambering to kill off the alien as fast as possible). For me, personally, the change didn't work. The film has quite a unique hook with the whole looks-like-her-dead-husband idea, but by the same token it's difficult to shake the suspicion that she's just using him to work out her issues with Scott. It works fine as an impossible love story, where a woman gets to spend time with her husband after he's gone, and even have a child with him before once again losing him to the stars. But as something that tells us the alien loves her back, and she doesn't just love him for looking like Jeff Bridgesâ?¦ well, it's less convincing. Fans of Starman just seem to go with it, so maybe I'll try that approach the next time I see it.

It's a perfectly palatable film, apart from the horrible bit with the transforming baby, and it's helped greatly by Jeff Bridges' strong turn as the alien. His bizarre body language and odd speech pattern sells the entire alien concept without having to use special effects, although there are a couple of those. Karen Allen is also convincing as the frustrated and confused Jenny; I just wish the conclusion of the film really felt like a love affair, and not an awkward, bizarrely Freudian rebound thing with a clone of her husband who acts like a four year old. (I would probably feel better about it if his character evolved through the course of the movie, but he's much the same - awkward, clipped, unearthly - throughout.).

I guess Starman works best if you don't think about it, and then with any luck you won't roll your eyes at how much of this you've seen before. (Alien-hating military, anyone?) At least it forms a pleasant response to John Carpenter's The Thing, which also had a shape-changing alien but with far more horrible consequences than just a one night stand. However, once the credits roll on Starman - curiously absent the David Bowie song you might surely expect to make an appearance - you've got to wonder how that baby's going to turn out. Also, bearing in mind his not-terribly-convincing story that he'll die if he doesnâ??t get off Earth (for some reason), you've also got to wonder: is this guy really just cruising the universe looking for vulnerable women? If so, maybe John Carpenter snuck another nasty alien by us after all.