Sometimes you watch a movie and just know a few minutes in that in a week's time you won't remember a thing about what you just watched. Alien from LA is that kind of bad movie, where it's just a bland level of schlock - well, except for one thing, which is the voice that Kathy Ireland decided on (or probably with Albert Pyun's expert auteurist direction). This is also a misleading title from the start: while there is an alien in this movie, it's not some other person from another planet or dimension, it's Ireland's character herself, going into some subterranean piece of crap place where everyone considers her the alien presence. Those going on thinking at, from the look of the poster, Kathy Ireland may be playing an alien as some like possessed being (ala Species) think again.
In what I imagine must have been the production design inspiration for the look of the Super Mario Brothers movie, this place that Ireland goes to is dreary looking and the designs for the characters are either really ugly and not in any kind of interesting or charming way (the short guy with the LONG eyelashes) or just off or odd (the woman who looks like discount Helena Bonham Carter). All that happens here is that Ireland, who is a bubble-headed nerd (if that makes sense) gets dumped by her boyfriend at the very start of the movie (because she doesn't, you know, GO places and stuff, sheesh what a lame-o), finds out her father may have died and goes to Africa where he was excavating, and falls down the same "bottomless pit" that he did.
It would be nice if there was anything like, say, engaging characters or good humor, but in absence of that there isn't anything lively enough to mock. I have to wonder how the MST3K episode of this went, and it must have been a slog to come up with enough good jokes in the writer's room (how much can you say about Ireland's squeaky voice that makes Betty Boop sound like Mariah Carey?) It's a dreadful experience not because of its low production value (albeit I will say some of the sets look like they got some work and a few shots are clever with the lighting, but just a few), but because it's just boring. You know where this is going to go, the characters are undeveloped, and the music sounds like it was created in an hour and in all the wrong places for MAXIMUM emotional stuff. Pass.
In what I imagine must have been the production design inspiration for the look of the Super Mario Brothers movie, this place that Ireland goes to is dreary looking and the designs for the characters are either really ugly and not in any kind of interesting or charming way (the short guy with the LONG eyelashes) or just off or odd (the woman who looks like discount Helena Bonham Carter). All that happens here is that Ireland, who is a bubble-headed nerd (if that makes sense) gets dumped by her boyfriend at the very start of the movie (because she doesn't, you know, GO places and stuff, sheesh what a lame-o), finds out her father may have died and goes to Africa where he was excavating, and falls down the same "bottomless pit" that he did.
It would be nice if there was anything like, say, engaging characters or good humor, but in absence of that there isn't anything lively enough to mock. I have to wonder how the MST3K episode of this went, and it must have been a slog to come up with enough good jokes in the writer's room (how much can you say about Ireland's squeaky voice that makes Betty Boop sound like Mariah Carey?) It's a dreadful experience not because of its low production value (albeit I will say some of the sets look like they got some work and a few shots are clever with the lighting, but just a few), but because it's just boring. You know where this is going to go, the characters are undeveloped, and the music sounds like it was created in an hour and in all the wrong places for MAXIMUM emotional stuff. Pass.