Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

MY STEPMOTHER IS AN ALIEN is one of those films with a great title but little in the way of a real plot to go with it. It's a typical lame '80s comedy in which a bunch of dated aliens beam down on Earth and one of them adopts the rather unlikely form of Kim Basinger in order to infiltrate mankind's society. What follows is an endless barrage of dated jokes, unfunny jokes, and just plain weirdness.I'll admit from the outset to not being a fan of Basinger, although she's well cast as an alien character here; there's always been something a bit weird about her, after all. Dan Aykroyd is stuck in the 'everyman hero' type role and can do little with it, although there's novelty value that arises from seeing future stars like Alyson Hannigan, Seth Green, and Juliette Lewis when they were but children.The special effects in the film have dated, not to mention the fashions and hairstyles, and overall it only raised a few chuckles along the way. Overall I think the '80s wave of alien comedies (such as MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE and EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY) was a disappointing one, an assembly of movies that did little to progress either the sci-fi or comedy genres in any way.

My brother has a very different way of picking movies than I do. In 1988 he opened a paper and ignorantly selected this. Since I'm generally willing to embrace the role of randomness in the universe, we checked it out. Even I was surprised at how freaking abhorrent it is. Kim Basinger having sex with Dan Aykroyd? No thank you. A purse with a penis-shaped alien in it? The alien has Alice Ghostly voice? A Jimmy Durante song performed more than once? This is really a mawkish pile of crusty, stale, day-old offal... and there isn't enough alcohol in the universe to remove the image of Aykroyd's nasty shirtless self from my memory. His chin here is on its way to becoming a repulsive goiter. Yes, this is one of "the Worst Movies Ever Made." Impossibly, Aykroyd then went on to make 'Nothing but Trouble' which, I assure you, actually IS the worst movie ever made. Years later I couldn't see L.A. Confidential until reams of accolades rolled in for it, due to an unwillingness contracted here (and from watching 'Cool World') to ever lay eyes on Kim Basinger again.My brothers hit/miss ratio has improved, but another friend has taken his place. A few years back he took us to Dark Water, an abysmal by-the-books stinker which all of us groaned through and agreed was something that should have been forced back into the anal cavity it dropped out of.

It is sometimes said that men are from Mars and women from Venus, and "My Stepmother is an Alien" is a romantic comedy about two lovers who are, quite literally, from different planets. Dan Aykroyd plays Steve Mills, a scientist searching for extra-terrestrial life. Kim Basinger plays the extra-terrestrial life he succeeds in finding. The basic idea is that one of Mills's experiments results in a beam of light being sent to a distant planet where, by some unexplained freak of physics, it causes catastrophic damage to that planet's gravitational system. By an even odder freak, that damage can only be reversed by another beam of light, so the planet's rulers dispatch the beautiful Celeste to Earth to try and persuade Mills to repeat his experiment. Mills, a lonely widower with a teenage daughter, ends up falling in love with, and then marrying, Celeste, not realising that she is not of this earth. The only person who does realise- hence the title of the film- is Mills's daughter Jessie (played by Alyson Hannigan of "Buffy" fame in her first film appearance).Celeste has supposedly been briefed about life on Earth before her mission, but although the inhabitants of her planet are supposedly very wise their information about Earth is either ludicrously out-of-date or ludicrously inaccurate, and most of the jokes in the film arise from Celeste's misunderstandings about earthlings and their ways. (For example, at a party she helps herself to an ashtray full of fag-ends in the belief that these are something to eat. Her own race appear to subsist on a staple diet of battery acid). During the course of her stay on earth, Celeste discovers a number of things that do not exist on her home planet- most notably sex (her people reproduce asexually), but also sandwiches, Shakespeare, sneezing and Jimmy Durante.Scientists in comedies are often portrayed as batty, eccentric, absent-minded professors (e.g. Robin Williams's character in "Flubber"). Despite his background as a comedian, however, Aykroyd does not play Mills in this way. Indeed, he generally seems to be playing straight man to Basinger's funny woman. Celeste's wayward behaviour does not arouse Mills's suspicions; he is so besotted with her that, whatever she does, he explains away as a Dutch custom (Celeste has told him that she is from the Netherlands) or puts down to lovable eccentricity.Kim Basinger can be a gifted comedienne, as she showed in films like "Blind Date" and "Nadine", but a comedienne is only as good as her material, and here much of the humour falls very flat, although there are some amusing scenes, such as the one where Celeste discovers what kissing is. (She is enlightened by her companion Bag, a talking, one-eyed snake-like creature who lives in her handbag, who shows her a series of film clips involving kissing, all of which she re-enacts with Mills).As other reviewers have pointed out, the plot of "My Stepmother is an Alien" resembles that of "Splash" (which starred the Basinger lookalike Daryl Hannah), but it lacks the earlier film's charm. When it was recently shown on British television, it was advertised as a Sunday afternoon family movie, but much of the humour- especially the love-scene and the scenes involving Mills's disreputable, womanising brother Ron- seems too sexual in nature for most family audiences. On the other hand, the overall tone is too mild and sentimental for the film to work as a bawdy comedy. It is not an outstandingly bad film, but it is difficult to see exactly what the point of it is. 5/10

This movie definitely falls under the "so bad it's funny" category. It is easily one of the most absurd Hollywood movies ever. Some of it almost feels like a Bugs Bunny cartoon starring SNL alums. The writer and director were either in the middle of a massive hallucinogen binge or had just gotten done watching like forty billion bad 1950s movies in a row.Akroyd is mostly boring, but the look on his face when the ultra sexy Basinger puts the moves on him is priceless -- you can tell he's been in that situation before. The best acting in the movie probably comes from the dog, but as far as human actors go, Alyson Hannigan (the daughter) is an entertaining and refreshing break from the pouty, "my parents are so lame" cardboard cutouts found in most 80s and 90s comedies.One of the funniest things I've ever seen comes at the party after the wedding. It lasts about a split second, but the band's keyboard player does the goofiest, most ridiculous 'pretending to make music' acting job ever.Bottom line: the story and dialogue are so completely ludicrous that depending on how goofy a sense of humor you have, this will either be the worst or the funniest movie you'll ever see.