I started thinking about obscure films that I’d seen in my hey-day. Whenever the fuck that was. Mostly they’re 80s films and stuff. The kinda shit I’d watch wide-eyed as a kid, and now, in an era of afternoon drinking and mid-week comedowns, send me into a weird spin and give me a severe sense of paranoia. This’ll be a regular feature on Planetnotion, and we kick-off with Mac and Me.
Mac and Me was a low-budget copy of E.T., courtesy of an obscure film company trying to cash-in. I always had a fear of E.T; nightmares and stuff. Mum reckons she’d hear me screaming and before she knew it I’d be flying down the stairs whilst she was watching Minder, screaming like a little girl…
I think it was the bit where E.T’s sunbathing by a river and ends up looking like a middle-aged woman holidaying in Benidorm that scared me. Shrivelled up like an alien prune. Anyways, Mac and Me was better than E.T. It was based on the same premise: (1) Alien gets lost (2) Alien gets found by human kid (3) Alien gets hunted (4) Alien gets reunited with parents… However, there are noticeable differences.
(1) The kid doesn’t look like a lesbian (2) The kid is in a wheel-chair (3) The alien doesn’t know any English, so he communicates by whistling like a cattle herder (4) There’s a dance scene in McDonalds featuring Ronald McDonald... sadly, the Hamburglar doesn’t feature.
Anyways, Mac gets reunited with his parents and they get hunted down by F.B.I. guys with guns. The film was made when people didn’t give a fuck about female representation, so the F.B.I. didn’t really have females back then.
Eventually, Mac and his family are left alone by the F.B.I. guys, following a MASSIVE explosion in a petrol station. I can’t remember how the explosion happened or why the F.B.I. weren’t pissed-off about it. You’d think that if they'd lost loads of their men, they’d send out helicopters to kill Mac and his family, or nuke them or something.
Anyway, the film culminates with Mac and his alien family dressed in suits, pledging their allegiance to the USA and being granted US citizenship. See, I told you it pisses all over E.T.
Film Fact: Ronald McDonald won the 1988 Golden Raspberry Award for his role in Mac and Me.
