April 21, 2004

Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one: An alien from space is stranded on earth and is befriended by a kid who hides the thing in his room from his mother who is divor . . . okay! okay! I’m stopping.

It goes without saying that success breeds imitation but having seen both films again recently, one could hardly call it imitation – this is closer to downright cloning, or plagiarism, take your pick. E.T. Phone Home? Spielberg Phone Attorney!

To avoid a copyright infringement the screenwriters make one or two changes and believe me they weren’t in the movie's favor. For example the alien has a family that’s stranded on earth and the kid is in a wheelchair. The kid has just moved into town with his mother and sister. All other similarities are purely coincidental.

The family is a pretty creepy bunch (the alien family I mean), who lumber and stumble around in their genial utopia sucking some kind of sweet brown syrup through straws from a lake (knowing that the movie is endorsed by Coca-Cola makes this an eerie foreshadowing of things to come). Suddenly a spaceprobe vaccu-sucks the family up and deposits them in the Mojave desert.

The family stumbles about in the desert, hiding out from government agents who want to slice them up and see what color their organs are. Meanwhile, the baby of the family boards the back of a van and ends up in the suburbs in the aforementioned home of Michael, the aforementioned kid in the aforementioned wheelchair.

The creature, I should tell you, isn’t one of the more attractive creatures ever put on screen. To be nice, it looks like E.T. cross-bred with a houseplant. To be not-so-nice it looks like the business end of a frog. He doesn’t speak, he just sort of hums and blinks. The family is a little creepy, they spend the bulk of the movie tromping around in the
desert humming and trying to signal the kid. Their signal is a weird sort of whistle while they look skyward with the heels of their hands clasps together. Are they sending a signal or catching a fly ball?

The movie stubbornly sticks by the conviction that the creature is named MAC because he’s a Mysterious Alien Creature and you’re willing to buy that notion until you realize just how much input McDonalds had in the financial backing (MAC, MACdonalds – get it?). Product placement is one thing but this movie goes so far as to have a full blown break dance number right there in the middle of one of the chain restaurants and ads that proudly trumpet a cameo by Ronald McDonald.

There's nothing wrong with a little advertising here and there but for heaven sake the movie eventually turns into a parade of storefronts. It's a buddy picture with McDonalds teaming up with Coke to fight the mean governmental forces that are threatening to kidnap the alien. The problem is that Mac and Me has the subtly of a handgrenade. It actually comes down to a race between McDonalds and Coke to see which product endorsement gets the award for the most shameless plug. Both are equal in their lack of humility but for me Coke wins the prize because it factors into the plot as a medicinal necture to heal MAC’s family. *slaps forehead*

This little nugget of brazen commercialism tops the list of unholy product placements. The all time best was the back of the video box for Red Dawn in which all of the militant character stand poised to defend America in the parking lot at McDonalds. Or the scene in Double Team when Dennis Rodman does away with Mikey Rourke using a Coke machine.

Mac and Me was released late in the Summer of 1988, 6 years after it’s original source of inspiration, hoping to rope a breed of kids who were still in diapers when that film came out (and operating on the wan hope that they had missed the earlier film). The movie was nominated for Worst Picture but lost to Cocktail. I can forgive that lapse in judgement because it’s sole award went to Ronald McDonald as Worst New Star who beat Jean Claude Van Damme!!!