So why is it so hard to like this film? Having seen it done so much better by Spielberg doesn't help, of course. There are assorted encounters, adventures, misadventures and escapes, during which the bonds between MAC and Eric grow strong, and eventually MAC is reunited with his family, and at the end. After becoming separated from his family, the little alien sneaks into their van, and don't you know, is about to sneak into their lives.Ĭonfined to a wheelchair, Eric is nonetheless mobile and active, but no one takes him seriously when he says he's seen E.T., I mean MAC (for Mysterious Alien Creature, presumably because Alien Life Force has already been taken). Concurrently, young Eric (Jade Calegory), his brother (Jonathan Ward) and his mother (Christine Ebersole) have moved west from Illinois. Deposited on Earth, they quickly escape the lab and discover they are truly strangers in a strange land - they're in California.Īnd they're not the only ones. There is an odd poetry to these creatures' gangly, languid, elastic movements, a suggestion of spiritual innocence defiled when an American space probe touches down and inadvertently sucks them up through a vacuum tube. On some odd planet that looks like Death Valley, an idyllic afternoon finds a typical family unit out for a picnic, just relaxing and sipping sweet underground nectar through crystal straws. 'MAC and Me' doesn't start out that badly. The Other Terrestrial,' so frequent and clumsy are its references to 'E.T.' Forget about calling home E.T., call lawyer. In fact, 'MAC and Me' could just as well have been called 'O.T. Anyone for another alien tag chase through those rolling hills, substituting a wheelchair for a bicycle, or an alien-in-disguise-in-public scene? Stop me if you've seen this one before: Cuddly little alien gets stranded on Earth but slowly reveals himself to a bunch of kids living with single moms in spacious suburban tracts, who then befriend him and hide him from all adults, including grim-visaged scientists who probably want to cut him up when all he wants to do is go home.

Is there a mac and me 2