Premise: An alien lands on Earth, takes the form of a woman's dead husband, then gets her to take him on a road trip to his rendezvous location in Arizona.
I swear. I didn't intend to go through John Carpenter's filmography so much lately. It just sort of happened. I think it's mostly a reflection of how much he's a strange blind spot for me. It took me a while to even remember Starman was one of his. I mainly saw the movie for the odd Jeff Bridges Oscar nomination. It sure doesn't play like any other Carpenter movie I can think of, other than the SciFi aspect of it. It's mostly a road trip romance movie.
It's hard to find much wrong with this movie. Karen Allen is great as the main character. Why didn't she have a bigger career? She's great in all the 80s movies I've seen her in. Anyone who can hold her own with Jeff Bridges, Harrison Ford, and Bill Murray has some untapped star potential, right? Yet, she never really developed into a top billed star. She barely even had a resurgence when the Indiana Jones fans got old enough to start casting things. Where's her guest appearance on Chuck, for crying out loud? This is a wild Oscar nomination for Bridges. The 80s had some fun nomination swings like this. He's really good with all the alien anthropology. Starman knows the basics of speech and syntax but his challenge is one of calibration. It's a unique spin on the "alien or robot learns to be human" subgenre. Because he's played by pre-Crazy Heart Jeff Bridges though, he's still full of all that charm I expect from Jeff Bridges.
I appreciated some of the shorthand of the movie. Starman doesn't get too bogged down in the details about his planet or why he's on Earth. The film wordlessly explains the situation with his spheres. We see that he only has a handful of them and they are an all-purpose "get shit done" tool. That's all we need to know.
I have a few small problems like how quickly Allen's character falls for the Starman and a little sagging toward the middle of the road trip. They are pretty minor though.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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