Alien Trespass: Critic Reviews

That warm tone, along with the picture's bright, saturated, anti-CGI look, is a welcome respite from jokes, irony, and the postmodern malaise of know-it-all-ness.

A charmingly sentimental but ultimately pointless homage to the sci-fi classics of yesteryear.

Alien Trespass, which opens Friday on the heels of the witty Monsters vs. Aliens, feels like an also-ran.

Those who fondly recall The Blob would seem to be the target crowd for a fastidious pastiche that attempts to coax laughs by maintaining a poker face.

Alien Trespass could be the latest bulletin from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 except that we're the silhouetted heads and the filmmakers are sitting right there next to us.

What's most admirable about Alien Trespass is its bypassing of the wink-wink condescension that usually defines screen flashbacks to the Eisenhower era. Its problem is the absence of any detectable personality in place of that wink.

This lazy effort gets points only for truly loving -- perhaps to a fault -- the cheapo creature flicks of the 1950s.

While there's a lot to admire, it all feels like an engaging though needless academic exercise.

It's comfy. It's kitschy. There are lovely enticements but also much that is simply put and beautifully, beguilingly silly.

Here is a movie more suited to ComicCon or the World Science Fiction Convention than to your neighborhood multiplex.

Sinks under the weight of its homage.

At a certain point you find yourself thinking, why not watch the real It Came From Outer Space, instead of this mildly amusing replica?

Alien Trespass, an affectionate tribute to flying saucer movies, treats the cliches of drive-in sci-fi with touching naivete. So why isn't it more fun?

Alien Trespass, with a rating notice that mentions 'brief historical smoking,' is at least better than last year's official remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

By the time the tedious proceedings reach their conclusion, one has long begun wishing for a little Mel Brooks-style comic anarchy.

While Alien Trespass stays true to the era and the genre, it forgets that its mission in this galaxy is not merely to pay tribute but to entertain.

The movie can't decide if it's an homage to 1950s sci-fi genre or a "new" kind of story.

An oddity from another time and place, and well worth a look because of it.

The patience and concentration of the film to not wink itself into a coma is amazing to behold, and I was flabbergasted over just how engrossing and playful the picture is.

Not nearly as awful as it could have been...it at least knows that it's cheesy, which makes it more fun.

It's not really clear why this movie was necessary %u2013 it does not reinvent the 50's movie so much as do a highly faithful cover version of it. (Gus Van Sandy's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho is a similar pointless academic exercise.)

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, It Came From Outer Space should be blushing like a schoolgirl, because this deadpan recreation of 1950s sci-fi movies is a tribute to its low-budget, high minded charms.

...gently wacky. Although breezy and sketchy on the easy laughs at times, Alien Trespass does promise to entertain for the sole purpose of its campy off-kilter makeup.

If the film succeeds perfectly in its aim, to recreate exactly a genre of films noted for how shoddy and boring they were, is it then fair to complain when the film is itself boring?