disappointment media
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • The Snake Hole
  • About

[Make Believe Seattle 2023] ALIENS ABDUCTED MY PARENTS AND NOW I FEEL KINDA LEFT OUT -- Cringey Coming-of-Age Dramedy Suffers a Weak Script

3/24/2023

1 Comment

 
Review by Cole Groth
Picture
The quirkiness of Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out’s title sums up the movie pretty well. This coming-of-age film, directed by Jake Van Wagoner and based on a script from Austin Everett, details the lives of two diametrically opposed teenagers who go on a journey of self-discovery while trying to find out if aliens stole one of their parents. While the premise is promising and — if handled by a better crew — could’ve been a truly amazing experience, this coming-of-age dramedy struggles with a bad script and weak characters.

Aliens Abducted My Parents has a fairly basic premise. Itsy (Emma Tremblay) is your everyday teenage girl. She’s just moved into a new town with her overbearing little brother (Kenneth Cummins) and her loving parents (Matt Biedel and Hailey Smith). She meets space-obsessed Calvin (Jacob Buster), who’s dedicated to finding out what happened to his parents (Will Forte and Elizabeth Mitchell) after an alien force seemingly stole them from him years earlier. While she finds him to be nerdy at first, she bonds with him over time.

High-school characters are almost always undermined by their scripts, and this time, viewers will find themselves incredibly frustrated with the relationship between the two. Calvin is very annoying because of how ridiculously nerdy he is. His dialogue is so obnoxiously nerdy that you can’t help but roll his eyes whenever he opens his mouth. While his dialogue is bad, it’s not as bad as his bully’s (Landry Townsend), who is so incredibly mean that it doesn’t feel realistic. Instead of putting any nuance into the script, Everett’s script makes every character’s intentions too apparent. It’s so amateur that the audience will certainly question how this got turned into a script at all.
Picture
It’s a shame that the actors don’t do a good job of elevating the weak source material. Like the dialogue, every actor turns into a caricature of a natural person. While this film has a sci-fi twist, it should be believable as a film grounded in reality. Unfortunately, audiences will be unable to connect to any of the characters, which is a big problem for coming-of-age stories like this. Families will enjoy a few cute moments, mainly the bonding between Itsy and her brother or the relationship between Itsy and Calvin. However, beyond that, it’s still a cringe-worthy experience.

Indie coming-of-age movies shouldn’t be this embarrassing. That nobody questioned the unbearable nature of the script is a shock to me. Emma Tremblay is only a few days younger than me, which made me wonder if she ever spoke up about how unrealistic the script was while she was making this. There has to be a better way for dialogue to be written because even if this was a well-intentioned story, it’s frustrating to watch teenagers speak like they are the aforementioned aliens.

If you’re a big fan of coming-of-age movies, be prepared to be disappointed by Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out. It has an overall nice message and shines in a few moments through its quirkiness, but is by far and large an unrewarding experience. You’d be much better off watching The Edge of Seventeen, 10 Things I Hate About You, or any other coming-of-age dramedy because this is only a shell of many superior films.

Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out screened at the 2023 Make Believe Film Festival, which runs March 23-26 in Seattle, WA.

Rating: 1.5/5
1 Comment
Anastasia
3/27/2023 12:19:00 am

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, the story-line with the gut punch and especially the chemistry of Tremblay and Buster. We have so few family-friendly movies; this is sure to be a hit. And it did win a Best of Feat Award at the Sundance film Festival.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019

    Authors

    All
    Adam Donato
    Alan French
    Allison Brown
    Borja Izuzquiz
    Camden Ferrell
    Cole Groth
    Daniel Lima
    Dan Skip Allen
    Erin M. Brady
    Jonathan Berk
    Joseph Fayed
    Josh Batchelder
    Paris Jade
    Rafael Motamayor
    Sarah Williams
    Sean Boelman
    Tatiana Miranda

disappointment media

Dedicated to unique and diverse perspectives on cinema!
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • The Snake Hole
  • About