‘Mac and Me’ maintains tradition of aliens marooned in America

Press, 28 July 1989, Page 30

‘Mac and Me’ maintains tradition of aliens marooned in America

“Mac and Me” continues the tradition of charming aliens marooned in America. In this story, a whole family is sucked into an unmanned American space probe which is taking atmospheric samples on a planet surface. When the probe is opened back on Earth, scientists are taken by surprise by the creatures which manage to escape. However, one of the children of the alien family is separated in the confusion, and the video is the story of the long fight to reunite them. The youngster stows away aboard a van with a family moving to Sacramento. No-one knows he is there, but some very strange things begin happening. Again in the tradition of these films, the aliens make their contact with the Earth’s children, and are safer in their hands than with the authorities who are hunting the creatures with suspicion and firearms. ■,

The human hero is a disabled boy, Eric, played by Jade Calegory, while the alien, Mac, is the creation of Martin J. Becker. The young alien is high technology, with 87 moving parts. “Mac and Me” was produced by R. J. Louis, who made the “Karate Kid” films. The rating recommends parental guidance, with a warning about language and content “Mac and Me” is among three Roadshow titles due for release through Video One on August 3. The video of Daphne du Maurier’s “Jamaica Inn” presents a landscape peopled with smugglers, wreckers, bailiffs, and thieves with secrets as dark as the mist that drifts across the moors. Jane Seymour stars in this long piece of overdrama set in the early years of the nineteenth century. She plays Mary, a girl left an orphan by the wreckers’ work, who goes to live at her

uncle’s inn on Bodmin Moor. It is a dark mysterious place, which the local people dread. Mary’s inquiring mind must unravel the secrets behind what goes on there, and she then has to work out who is responsible. A brooding, slobbering Patrick McGbohan plays the landlord of this dreary inn, and Billie Whitelaw plays his longsuffering wife. John McEnery is the local vicar, and Trevor Eve is a local thief who will add some entertainment to Mary’s life. It is rated for parental guidance with a warning about language or content Alan J. Pakula offers an intriguing piece of drama on video in “Orphans,” a play by Lyle Kessler. It features two actors who performed in the play’s stage productions, Albert Finney and Kevin Anderson. Joining them is Matthew Modine, who appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”

The stage origins remain, to good effect Modine and Anderson play two orphaned brothers who have shunned institutional care but have lived in their nightmarish family home for years. Anderson, the younger of them, has taught himself to read but cannot tie his shoelaces, and spends his life trapped inside because bis brother has convinced him that in the open he will be overcome by life-threatening allergies. Modine has kept them financed by mugging and petty thievery, but he befriends Finney in a bar to entice him home for robbery and ransom. Finney, however, gets free and takes over their household, offering them parenting and friendship, and taking them outside their chaotic, dead-end lives. The video is a treat for those who like intense stage dramas. It is rated as suitable for viewers 13 and over, with a warning that the content may offend.— D.C.,