Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)

What a beautiful movie!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I think I may have liked this film if I had watched it when I was younger. Earth Girls are Easy is almost fun, but it's too dumb to love. I felt embarrassed for the actors most of the time.

In the 90's, there were two Julie Browns on one channel. MTV. One was the wubba wubba wubba fashionista. The other was a wild redhead who sang songs like "Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun." One guess which one we preferred?Written by Brown (along with frequent collaborator Charlie Coffey and Terrence McNally) and directed by Julian Temple (a groundbreaking video director who also was in the chair for The Great Rock 'n Roll Swindle with the Sex Pistols and Absolute Beginners), this movie was a troubled production, with over five months of post-production that led to several scenes and even an entire production number being removed. Due to the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group going out of business, the film went unscreened for over a year.Three aliens - Mac (Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park), Zeebo (Damon Wayans, The Last Boy Scout) and Wiploc (Jim Carrey, Man in the Moon) notice a broadcast from Earth filled with aerobics and half-naked women. They follow the signal to Earth and the home of Valerie (Geena Davis, The Long Kiss Goodnight), a manicurist who has lost her fiance, Ted (Charles Rocket, who famously said f*** on Saturday Night Live in an era where that would ruin your career). The aliens crash land in Valerie's pool and when she investigates, she smacks her head against the UFO.Mac decides to miniaturize her and bring her inside the ship. Why is the ship miniaturized? I've wondered the answer to this question for decades. The aliens quickly assimilate Earth culture via TV and get a makeover from Valerie's best friend Candy (Brown), then go to a nightclub where Mac and Valerie fall in love and Deebo has a long dance battle that defies any description that I can writeValerie and Mac make love while Zeebo and Wiploc go to the beach with pool boy Woody (Michael McKean, This is Spinal Tap). Through some miscommunication, they end up robbing a convenience store and get arrested, along with Mac and Valerie, who have come to rescue them.The aliens are taken to Ted's hospital, where he learns that they are aliens. Valerie and Mac convince him that he's gone insane and take everyone back to her house, where the aliens prepare to leave for their home planet. Thinking that Mac has picked his home planet over her, Valerie plans on marrying Ted in Las Vegas. Of course, she soon realizes the error of her ways and goes into space to be with her true love.The soundtrack is rich with the music of the 80's: Hall & Oates, Information Society, the B-52's, Depeche Mode, the Jesus and Mary Chain and several songs by Brown, including "Brand New Girl," "Earth Girls Are Easy" and "Cause I'm a Blonde."This is a movie packed with fun. It's the kind of future that the 50's thought that the 80's would be. Throw in an appearance by the "patron saint of Los Angeles" Angelyne and you have a time capsule of the goofier side of MTV era pop culture.BONUS: Frankenstein and Calamity Jane's cars from Death Race 2000 and Robby the Robot make cameos in the film, as well as the lectroids from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension!

There is a lot here to like. The songs are well written and genuinely funny, the comic pacing is nicely zippy and the situation could hardly have more camp appeal, combining space aliens, makeovers and Valley culture into a goofy, fun mix. The look of the picture is a major plus, with everything having a sparkly quality to it, and the slightly goofy 50s appearance of the spaceship is a definite plus. Geena and Jeff are an attractive, easy to like couple, and carry off the fairly absurd premise (a whirlwind interspecies romance) disarmingly. One major weakness with the picture is an inability to find screen business for Jim Carrey, who has a few fine moments, but his unique gifts for mimicry and physical comedy are largely wasted.

This eighties comedy might not be a classic but it is still a lot of fun; Geena Davis plays Valerie, a valley girl whose doctor fiancé Ted is carrying on with one of his nurses. Her life is changed when the day after she throws him out of the house a trio of hirsute aliens crash their spaceship into her pool named Wiploc, Weebo and Mac. Luckily for them she works at a hairdressing salon so with a little help from her friend Candy they go from looking like a three colourful wookies to being Jim Carey, Damon Wayans and Jeff Goldblum respectively. They might look human but they don't sound it as they learnt English from watching television for a short while. Surprisingly nobody seems to notice even when they go to a night club! Once they return to Valerie's they are confronted by her fiancé who is not placated when she explains that they are a band she won for the weekend on MTV. Luckily for them he is arrested and that night Mac comforts, and sleeps with, Valerie. They should be able to depart in the morning but the pool man invites Wiploc and Weebo to the beach and on their way back a series of mishaps lead them to Ted's emergency room where it is certain he'll realise they aren't human so Valerie and Mac must rescue them before they can be dissected! As one can tell from the summary this is not a serious film and that is without having mentioned the frequent musical numbers that occurred during the film. The acting is good enough though and it is clear that everybody involved knew they were making something silly. The special effects are of a fairly low quality although I suspect that was deliberate given the designs of the spaceship. The songs aren't fantastic but they may get stuck in your head and are sung in a way that fits the film. This is very much a film of its time but it is still enjoyable and still makes me laugh more than I expected it to.