Amanda & the Alien Reviews

This exceedingly lightweight farcical romance is lit like an army training film and acted as if Shannen Doherty were the movie's dialogue coach. Pushing for laughs with a script that doesn't provide any, the flailing actors mug their way from here to eternity. Unlike her tredy contemporaries, non-conformist Amanda (Nichole Eggert) prefers hanging out in her favorite coffee house to shopping mall spending sprees or rave parties. She feels she's as much of a misfit as an extraterrestrial visiting Earth. Meanwhile, FBI hotshot Emmitt Mallory (Stacy Keach) and junior officers Vint (Michael Dorn) and LeBeau (David Millbern) are trying to keep a pair of actual space aliens under wraps. After assuming the shape of government employee Connie (Alex Meneses), one alien escapes Mallory's custody and tries to pass as human at the coffee house Amanda frequents. Due to Connie's unusual behavior, Amanda realizes that she is actually an alien invader. Unafraid, Amanda encourages the clueless outer space creature to inhabit the body of her philandering boyfriend Charlie (Michael Bendetti). (Unfortunately, the space-creature's human hosts get obliterated each time the restless alien invades another earthling's body). Once the alien inhabits Charlie, Amanda falls passionately in love with this newly sensitized version of her boyfriend, and vows to drive the alien-Charlie to his contact point at the Hollywood sign in LA. Tracked to a Bakersfield motel by Mallory's indomitable agents, Amanda dupes the Feds into believing she's the latest alien-inhabited earthling, thus enabling the alien to leave Charlie and take over agent Vint. A lift from a sympathetic trucker named Bubba (Ritch Brinkley) puts Amanda and Alien-Vint nearer his rendezvous point, but dogged FBI pursuit forces the alien to take control of Mallory's body. Aided once more by Bubba, Amanda must bid farewell to her alien amour who's beamed aboard a spaceship. Made confident by her close encounter, Amanda remains on Earth with a renewed interest in life and in her art career. Taking those tabloid "I Slept With a Spaceman" stories to a level of comical incongruity, AMANDA AND THE ALIEN tries hard to lampoon the extra-terrestrial sighting craze. Apparently absent when God was passing out filmmaking finesse, this movie's perpetrators know little about manufacturing gossamer romance and absolutely nothing about building comedy sequences. A lampoonish soufflé can't rise to the occasion when its ingredients include harsh lighting, grating soft-rock music, and bungled slapstick. Although principals Eggert and Bendetti exhibit some chemistry, the other thespians overdo their awareness of what's supposed to be amusing. Viewing this film is like watching Red Skelton or Benny Hill laughing at their own jokes--when they're not funny. Replete with masturbation gags, lunkhead FBI stereotypes, and cheesy creature special effects, AMANDA AND THE ALIEN offers viewers little solace, but does provide reformed PTL sinner Jessica Hahn with a cameo as a TV talk show hostess. (Extreme profanity, extensive nudity, violence, sexual situations.)