I was kind of reluctant to do this one because I feel like it’s pretty well worn territory. Low hanging fruit, if you will. There have already been countless podcasts, think pieces, and running late night TV gags dedicated to Mac and Me and its abject awfulness. A lot of what I do here at VHS of the Week involves excavating movies from my childhood, particularly ones I had previously declared to be my “favorite movie of all time” (this label was generally applied to every movie I watched in the 1980’s). I will then proceed to watch said favorite movie of all time and discover that it is actually terrible, thus retroactively ruining my own childhood. I was at the video store with my dad in late ’88 and he asked me what I wanted to rent and I said “Mmm...The Unbearable Lightness of Being looks pretty solid”...‘cuz I was already a real pompous cineaste at age 9. He said “how about the unbearable lightness of being grounded for a month if I catch you watching that movie!” Not a direct quote, of course, but something in that vein. “Here...why don’t you try watching something for kids your age for a change” he said, yanking Mac and Me off of the shelf. I complained bitterly...until I actually watched it. After it was over I demanded to be driven to the nearest McDonald’s so I could slam Big Mac’s, pound Coca-Cola, and spend my entire allowance on Mac and Me swag. I loved that movie. If you mentioned Mac and Me at any point over the last 32 years I would say “I loved that movie!” When I met my girlfriend 8 years ago we immediately bonded over our shared love of Mac and Me. “We’ll have to watch it together” we told each other. This would be easy to achieve as we BOTH own a copy of the flick on VHS. And then...we just never watched it. If there was one favorite movie from childhood that was guaranteed to NOT hold up it was Mac and Me. But difficult times require difficult decisions...so last week we popped a gauzy, degraded copy of said flick into the VCR and held our breath.
What happened was this: In the late 80’s this fella by the name of R.J. Louis decided that the “next generation” needed an E.T. of their own. Now...I don’t know exactly how many years a generation contains...but I’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s more than six, which is the number of years that separate E.T. and Mac and Me. Louis produced the Karate Kid flicks, which is cool, and also worked as an ad exec for McDonald’s, which is less cool. He figured enough time had elapsed since E.T. that people were just starving for another little kid/googly alien buddy flick. And also--starving for french fries! Specifically McDonald’s french fries. They must have held a board meeting and said “remember when we see Reese’s Pieces in E.T.?? What if we did that again but with 300 different products instead of one? Like...shoot a 99 minute commercial with a superfluous alien storyline?” So that’s exactly what they did. I would say you could make a drinking game where you took a shot every time there’s product placement in Mac and Me but your liver would fall out of your asshole before the 30 minute mark.
Anyway...so the movie begins on an unspecified planet that is totally just a rest area off of the interstate somewhere in Arizona. Seriously, I think you can even see a Cracker Barrel in the background if you squint real hard. They don’t even try to make it look outer spacey AT ALL. A NASA rover lands on the planet/rest stop and a family of naked aliens come trundling out to see what’s what. Here I just want to take a second to say that I have reviewed almost 100 films and the NASA name/logo has been invoked in about 50% of them. Apparently, in the 1980‘s, all you had to do to get the NASA logo in your flick was simply ask. No scruples at all, those space nerds. What do these aliens look like you ask? Imagine if you took the actor Mickey Rooney, popped him with a pin, stripped him naked and then slathered vaseline all over his body. Kind of like that...although the dad also looks kind of like what the actor Ed Begley Jr might look like if he lives to be 105. The aliens; mom, dad, sis, and baby bro, don’t speak but they do whistle. Specifically, a melody that sounds eerily similar to Gizmo’s theme from Gremlins. Oh and that familiar-ish score in the background? That’s courtesy of Back to the Future composer Alan Silvestri. Everything is this movie is hijacked. Literally everything.
Speaking of hijacking...the rover extends a vacuum wand that reverses itself from blow to suck. The suddenly amorphous alien family is sucked up like cracker crumbs in a couch crack. They are secreted back to a secret laboratory at Area Wherever Whatever where they are spat out before a crowd of horrified scientists and government officials. They immediately start blowing stuff up with their minds and smash their way through a maze of walls and electric fences. The baby alien makes his way to the interstate, where he is squashed onto the windshield of a passing vehicle, causing a horrific car crash. Traffic is brought to a standstill while the paramedics douse a burn victim with the foam from a fire extinguisher. This is some pretty gnarly shit for a PG! My dad really should’ve let me take home my Milan Kundera instead. Caught up in the accident traffic is the Cruise family, en route from Chicago to Southern California in their mint ass Volkswagen bus. Wait a minute--their last name is CRUISE!? Oh come on!! That is NOT a real name! Even Tom Cruise’s last name isn’t really Cruise! Anyway the Cruise family is cruising west so Mom Cruise can start a new job. She’s got her teenage son Michael and her wheelchair-bound younger son Eric in tow. Everyone in the van is just crushing cans of Coke like it’s the nectar of the gods. The little alien fella manages to climb aboard the Cruise wagon ‘cuz he wants to see what Cali is all about. He also drinks some Coke.
The next day the family arrives in Cali and, shit you not, their neighborhood is the EXACT SAME NEIGHBORHOOD from E.T.! They must’ve been running a special housing program for single moms raising young boys and contraband aliens. Moms must’ve hit the lotto too ‘cuz their new spread is tight. They start to move into their new digs and about 15 products are hawked in about 3 minutes. We see boxes from United Movers, bottles of Gatorade, Energizer Batteries, and gallons upon gallon of Coke. The kids are from Chicago so that means their rooms, which are fully decorated faster than you can say copyright infringement, are covered in posters for the Cubs and the Bears. Sports teams wanted a piece of the Mac too! You know how in The Truman Show the characters were required to shill different products directly into the camera? It’s exactly like that. I kept expecting little Eric to break the fourth wall and say “Gatorade really IS thirst aid for that deep down body thirst!!!”
The family settles in with the quickness and the Cruise boys meet their female neighbors Debbie and Courtney...who just happen to be the same ages as each of the boys. The younger sister, Courtney, appears in her “Gertie from E.T.” Halloween costume throughout the film. You know who isn’t settling in? The poor little alien dude. He misses his folks something awful. He cries. It’s wicked sad. He doesn’t immediately reveal himself to the family, though. Instead he pulls a bunch of pranks, like drilling through the walls like the killer in those Slumber Party Massacre flicks and dragging a bunch of trees inside and rearranging the dining room to look like the set of a Michel Gondry video. When mom sees that her new home has been destroyed she is predictably bullshit. “Ma, it wasn’t me...I’m in a wheelchair!” Eric protests, not unreasonably. She believes him. It is not mentioned again. Later that afternoon Eric goes out exploring and accidentally sends his wheelchair careening down a hill in his backyard. I’m thinking...this hill doesn’t look that big...he can probably HOLY SHIT!!! The friggin’ wheelchair suddenly plunges off of a 200 foot cliff and crashes into the rapids below. Dude...there is NO WAY this cliff is anywhere near this kid’s house! It’s not even the same terrain. Did they not hire a continuity editor for this movie?? So poor Eric can’t swim but luckily the alien, who has his lifeguard certification, has been stalking the kid. He pulls him to safety. Now Eric knows the alien is real. While Eric is in the hospital recovering from his precipitous fall he starts to tell the doctors that he saw a little man. The doctors are all “humina humina better pump this kid full of valium and maybe call DSS!”
Eric is now hellbent on capturing this elusive little sumbitch. His mom doesn’t believe him, natch. Says to leave her the hell alone so she can focus on her new job...at SEARS! Eric enlists Courtney to help him out. They manage to capture the little fella in the vacuum cleaner but then then the vacuum cleaner turns evil and drags Courtney across the ceiling in an homage to, I don’t know, The Exorcist? They blow him out of the vacuum and dude is cashed out. He’s had a tough week...just like everyone watching Mac and Me. What do they give an alien for his severe fatigue? You guessed it: a can of delicious Coca-Cola! Ohhh...and he loves it too. “They must drink this at home,” Eric says. Sure they do, kid, Sure. Mom comes home to find her house trashed yet again and asks what in the actual fuck is going on. “We sucked him up and blew him out, mom!” Eric beams with delight. Mom gets right on the phone to inquire about empty beds in the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai. The alien feels bad the kid caught hell for his vacuum shenanigans so he fixes the house up while everyone is asleep. He spackles the walls and puts down a fresh coat of paint, repairs the broken woodwork, purchases new artwork and elaborate floral arrangements, and puts photos of horses all over the house. Mom is psyched when she wakes up. I mean...does she really think her sons are responsible for all of this new construction? Also--horses?? Does this alien have some sort of weird equestrian fetish? Meanwhile back in AZ the rest of the alien family are just lying around the desert three miles from the NASA compound...completely exposed and likely starving to death. Could the government really not find three aliens in an open field right across the friggin’ street?? Jesus.
The alien mostly hangs around the Cruise residence making weird flowers out of drinking straws and watching Morton Downey Jr on the TV. This is all well and good until Eric realizes that he double booked: he was supposed to alien sit AND go to Courtney’s birthday party! Even though the alien is coming down with some sort of flu (hope it’s not the Covid, dude) Eric decides to kill two birds with one stone and just bring the alien with him. While Courtney and her family wait impatiently in the driveway Eric finds a giant teddy bear, hollows it out, and stuffs the alien inside of it. They hop in the backseat like nothin’ to see here! The birthday party is, of course, at a McDonald’s...and it’s friggin’ bonkers! The camera gazes lovingly upon the McDonald’s facade like it’s gazing on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I realize that there’s supposed to be a kid birthday party in progress but there’s, like, 200 amazingly overwhelming things occurring simultaneously. It’s a giant bacchanal but with children and filet-o-fish sandwiches. There’s a flash mob of dancers in football costumes. In fact the entire place breaks out into a synchronized dance routine. Even the bear-suited alien jumps up on the counter and starts to pop-n-lock! I wonder...did they ever question the logic of staging an elaborate dance sequence in front of the wheelchair-bound star of the movie? Like...dancing is the BEST! Well...maybe not for you though...
Someone drops a dime on this break dancing teddy bear and now the FBI is after Eric and Mac. Did I mention that Eric decides to name the alien “Mysterious Alien Creature” about 3/4th of the way through the movie? Well he does. So there you have it: Mac and Me. Well...I mean...not ME...but him. Eric. The FBI chases Mac and Eric down all of the same streets that Elliott and E.T. rode down. Too bad the chase occurs in broad daylight because I could totally see those two motherfuckers flying right across a full moon. The filmmakers are THAT shameless! I haven’t even mentioned all of the songs on the soundtrack that sound exactly like the band Chicago but are not Chicago...and I’m not going to. Or...I just did! Eric hauls ass into the Sears where his mom works and Mac makes all of the TV’s explode with his mind. You know that shit is coming out of her paycheck. Big brother Michael rolls up in the VW bus with the neighbor gals in tow and rescues Eric and Mac. Mac keeps pointing east. Like...home. He wants to go home. E.T. phone home. Mac is WIPED OUT so they decide to feed him Skittles. “I hope he doesn’t have a disease,” says one of the girls. Ever think that maybe he’s just sick because y’all are feeding him fuckin’ Skittles??
They decide they’re gonna let Mac lead them where he leads them. “Maybe we’ll have a close encounter of the third kind” says Michael. As if this movie was already cemented onto Steven Spielberg’s dick. If the entire family was suddenly eaten by a shark (on land) I wouldn’t even flinch. Mac directs the crew to a cave way out in the desert where they find his family near death. They start listening to heartbeats and checking for pulses and bah hah hah do aliens have pulses?? Someone suggests calling 911. I’d love to be on the receiving end of THAT emergency call. Instead, some genius has the genius idea to feed the aliens an ice cold can of delicious All-American Coca-Cola. Ahh yes...coke: the sweet elixir of alien life! And guess what?? They all perk right the hell up!! Must be some of that original recipe stuff, knowwhatimsayin’? Now they’ve got a busload of aliens and no particular place to go. The aliens can’t tell them what they want because they do not speak. Mac could have the voice of Gilbert Gottfried for all we know! They couldn’t have had that thing croak out a “Fweeennndss” or something?
The gang heads to a local Stop & Shop ‘cuz the aliens are fiending for more cola. Mikey tells the aliens to wait in the car but they only understand Mogwai whistle so they grab a cart and head straight for the snack aisle. Naturally, when people see a family of aliens that look like Mickey Rooney’s balls they freak the fuck out. The police are quickly called to the scene as are the FBI and guns are drawn and tempers flare. I think there’s some sort of deeper themes at play here about judging people for looking different but...frankly...I don’t feel like getting to all of that right now. The aliens try to escape peacefully but some hothead with an itchy trigger finger starts a shootout and the aliens explode themselves. They die. And oh no’s, y’all! Little Eric is laid out on the ground too. The EMT’s attend to him for like three seconds and are all like “yeah, he’s dead. Sorry for your luck.” Wait...he’s fucking DEAD!? Why would my father let me watch this movie!? Everyone is crying. I’m crying. Mom shows up on the scene and starts wailing “my baby my baby!” Before they can get the kid bagged and tagged, though, the aliens walk out of the fire completely unburned. They form a circle around Eric’s body and pull some Mr Miyagi shit and the kid comes back to life! They couldn’t have done the kid a solid and healed up his spinal bifida while they were at it? Lame.
So ok--that was bad...but it wasn’t THAT bad. I didn’t enjoy it but I wasn’t full of rage the entire time either. I’m thinking the reason for this is that the movie is essentially E.T....and I like E.T. Who doesn’t like E.T.? No one I want to know! Oh but wait! There’s a denouement. Since the aliens were kind enough to resurrect a young child the powers that be have decided to grant the aliens AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP!! Bring us your tired...your weak...your naked coke-guzzling aliens. Man, don’t let Donald Trump see this movie! Actually he’s probably already seen it because McDonald’s. There’s a big to-do at city hall or wherever it is they award citizenship to aliens. Afterwards the aliens hop in a pink Cadillac and drive down the 101 Freeway. A title card that reads “We’ll be back!” appears on the screen. If you are holding your breath for a sequel then you’ve been holding your breath for 32 years. We’re waiting, dudes, we’re waiting. The end.