Mac and Me   Starring (voice): Jade Calegory, Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward, Katrina Caspary and Lauren Stanley Second Sight RRP: £15.99 2NDVD3189 Certificate: U Available 13 December 2010

Mac, the Mysterious Alien Creature, and his family are accidentally sucked into a space probe and find themselves on a strange new planet, Earth. Mac becomes separated from his family and heads off to discover this new world with hilarious results. Mac finds himself in the home of 10-year old Eric, who has recently moved into the neighbourhood and the pair soon become the best of buddies. Eric must help his new alien playmate find his family...

Mac and Me could have been a half decent kid's movie if someone had bothered to pad out the story with a little more material and make it a little more amusing so that adults could sit through it with their offspring.

The main story focuses around Mac, a young alien life form, who accidentally finds himself on Earth when he and his family are sucked into a NASA space craft that is collecting samples on his home world. On earth Mac gets separated from his family and is soon befriended by two young boys. Can Mac get back to his family before the NASA agents track him down?

Their are two major problems with this movie. Firstly, while it starts promisingly enough (for a movie aimed at the very young) it soon descends into a complete mess as the paper thin plot dissolves and no one seems to know what's happening. What was the jogging scene all about? Why did the neighbourhood dogs chase Mac? And what on Earth is that ending all about?

And secondly, this is packed wall to wall with product placement so in your face that you can't help but laugh at how ludicrous it is. For starters Mac does nothing but drink Coca Cola throughout the movie (in fact it provides him with the only source of nourishment he seems to need) and the McDonald's plugs are just way over the top. Ronald McDonald makes an appearance, the kids eat at McDonalds, there's a kid's party at a McDonald's branch and er... the main alien is called Mac. Now, while Mac is supposed to stand for Mysterious Alien Creature, the producers are fooling know one - it's obviously a reference to the Big Mac. There are other product placements (for Sears and Skittles) but they seem almost subtle in comparison.

It doesn't help that the marketing people try to pass this off as an E.T. clone. But then there are so many obvious elements "borrowed" from that film that I began to wonder why anyone would want to watch Mac and Me when they can watch the far superior E.T.

As I said earlier, a little bit more effort and this would have been a passable movie. As it stands though, it's almost unwatchable.

2

Nick Smithson