Customer Reviews

Mac and Me

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

If you want your kids to watch an inferior version of E.T. filled with poor acting and loaded with product placements for Coke and McDonalds you have found your movie! Oh and with an added bonus not included in E.T. Mac and Me offers a disturbing scene in which a disabled wheelchair bound boy falls off a cliff and nearly drowns. Don't worry he is saved by the title alien Mac (get it like a Big Mac sandwich) who apparently needs to drink Coca Cola to stay alive. I was chilled when Mac tells us he'll be back implying he'll be appearing in a followup film but since the movie is now almost twenty years old and no sequel has appeared on the horizon perhaps we can rest easy.

mac and me is insane. this movie is chock full of moments that really tug at the heart-strings. feel sorry for the poor little wheel-chair bound boy and don't forget to buy coca-cola and eat at mcdonald's. at one point the alien dies and is revived by drinking coca-cola. i love this movie.

I swear, this movie is worth buying just to have it at your disposal for a laughter session. the mcdonalds dance scene is probably the lamest, but also the funniest thing ive ever seen. how does this stiff crappy alien turn into a 3 feet tall dancing machine in a few seconds?? The only reason for 3 stars is because of its humor content, not bc of its originality (et)

This is it. Oh my God, is this bad. Beyond description awful. This Coke and McDonald's commercial, I mean, "movie", rips off E.T., has atrocious acting, panders to an audience's sympathy for the handicapped, assuming you have the emotional depth of a Lilliputian puddle, and, most importantly, will make you laugh beyond belief. The dance scene in McDonald's has to be seen to be believed. Buy it now.

I remember watching this when I was younger and thinking of it as not bad but not as good as E.T. Thanks to Blockbuster.online and they mass of movies you can rent, I added this on my quere and just watched it yesterday. Oh man where to start.

First of all the movie is the most obvious E.T. ripoff ever. (1) A family without a dad and two boys(2)Older brothers name is Michael,(3) Girls name Debbie vs Gerdie, (4) Alien tricked into the house with food/beverage (Coke replaced the Reeses) (5) Alien talks, (6) Chased by the Government, etc. There was even a scene which LOOKED like the playground scene where the van stopped so they could plan.Man I was waiting for the wheelchair to start flying.

After I watched this I felt a sudden need for a value menu at McDonalds with a Coke and some Skittles. The product placement was non stop-always placed in a way the viewer could see perfectly. As the movie was in the final scene I thought the barrage was over until I saw MAC has a MCKIDS shirt and I just started cracking up. For reference you may remember it- the scene where the alien family gets citizenship in the US and then drives a car!

Honestly this movie is only for kids. Any adult would watch that McDonalds dancing scene and know it was cinematic awfulness. Two stars because its honestly in that rare "so bad its good" but only to laugh at and only once.

I bought this thing not long ago. I had heard quite a lot about it but hadn't seen it, and I was bound and determined to see if it was as bad as I'd heard.

Well, it isn't. Actually it is almost indescribably awful. Never mind the E.T. cloning job (similar in a way to the roomful of hideous, botched Ripley clones in "Alien Resurrection".) Don't even think twice about the incredible product placement. Those things are too well known to need discussion. What makes this thing so abominable is that the characters are so shallow and the script so idiotic that it's almost impossible to think that the people emoting before the cameras (I won't pollute my keyboard by calling it "acting") didn't realize what cultural sewage they were in up to their hips (or, in Jade's case, knees.)

Truth be told, I found this filmed chunk of vapid stupidity to be so bad that I couldn't watch it in one sitting. I think the fimmakers were deliberately trying to see what they could get away with, and this insult was the result.

I have no idea what motivated these people to sign up. Being in this did nothing for Calegory professionally, and I'm sure Jonathan Ward wished he'd never signed on the line. I'm sure these two are quite successful today in their chosen fields, but whenever the Ur-'80s totally rad older brother appeared toting his all-but-obligatory skateboard or the disabled kid with hair like aluminum rolled-in and spoke in his grating, irritating squeal, all I could think was, "You putz."

By all means, buy it- but do it to add to your bad movie collection. That is its only virtue.

I would like to first, thank the producers of this film for their ability to rip off another movie without feeling any pity. There were too many unintended flaws to summarize, but I will do my best to elaborate on most of them.

***SPOILER (If Possible)***
We start this amazing film with aliens in the middle of the Arizona desert, and the "father" is getting his fix by drinking ground water. Aliens hitch a ride back to Earth and escape the military. Boy in poorly designed wheelchair befriends E.T. and they experience hilarious adventures, including tragedy. Movie ends and wheelie-boy still has no father. The End.

Okay, so I missed a considerable amount of detail, but this movie has to watched to truly understand the brilliance of film-making. I am unsure if anyone whom participated in the making of this film (i.e. producers, director, gaffer) ever worked again. I am not saying that this movie is bad, it is horrible, yet hilarious. The first time I watched this masterpiece, I was begging for more. It ended so abruptly and they made a promise they couldn't keep (you will see at the end).

So, the kid that they have to play Me, er, Derek, er, Eric was a fine specimen of an actor. Had zero acting ability and his wheelchair skills were not up to snuff. In the infamous scene, he obviously had not tested wind speed nor trajectory. Lets just say he won't be participating in any wheelchair high-dive competitions. His landing was all wrong, so I will go with the judges and give him a 6.5 for height and 5.7 for the landing. No wonder he was left off the American team. Honorable mention goes to his new girlfriend, Debbie. She spends most of her time spying on her neighbors and whines a lot. Her sister is hot though and works at McDonald's, so thats a plus. Anyway, Debbie likes to annoy people and fly around the room wearing a vacuum on her back. She is a girl of many talents who will go far in life.

Let's talk about MAC; the hapless adorable squirrel-cat that is the root of all evil. He has all the best lines in the movie and is hopeless romantic. All he wants to do is drink soda and sleep. His former college roommates stated in an interview that he trashed the dorms on a regular basis. If it weren't for the Roid-rage, he might be fun to hang out with at the local arcade.

Everyone else in the movie gets my star of approval. If there is anyone whom I felt truly sorry for, it would have to go to Christine Ebersol (mom), and Robert Davi (cop #3 - of Wishmaster fame). Mom was cool even though she and her family had the worst couple of days that anyone can experience. Mr. Davi - well, we all need to get are start somewhere.

Watch this movie with friends, family, and relatives. I just wish they made a sequel. So, if anyone is interested, I have ideas to re-make this classic. All I need is about $173.21.

"Mac and Me" isn't a good movie. This was a fact long before the internet perpetuated it with clips of the infamous wheelchair scene, causing many people to assume this conclusion without even seeing the whole film themselves, but for once, the assumption isn't inaccurate. It's tough to creatively criticize a movie that's been bashed from hell to breakfast like this one, but luckily, I have a personal complaint to elaborate on. You see, being the mushy kind of guy I am, I could have forgiven the shoddy acting, lackluster special effects, and shameless product placement if the movie had capitalized on its "a boy and his alien" premise...but, as you can tell by my rating, it didn't pull it off.

The story: accidentally abducted by a NASA probe, a family of aliens is separated from their son on earth. With government agents tracking him, "Mac" must forge a friendship with wheelchair-bound Eric Cruise (Jade Calegory) and his own family if he ever hopes to be reunited.

I'll admit it again - I'm a sucker for "child-and-their-strange-friend" stories. Movies and media like Lilo & Stitch, Dragonworld, Digimon Tamers, and of course E.T. found their way into my heart by such means, and even though the rest of the movie stunk to high heaven, a well-rendered friendship between Mac and Eric could have saved it in my book. Sadly, the movie doesn't even try: the extent of their kinship is Mac looking mighty confused while Eric ignores all common sense in defending him, angrily claiming that Mac's not dangerous even after he's demolished his living room for no reason and lured him to fall off a cliff. The entire alien family is like that: unintentional hilarity occurs at the end of the movie when Eric's brother (Jonathan Ward, who'd voice Zak in FernGully - The Last Rainforest) repeatedly hollers "They're not gonna hurt anyone!" at the police, even after we've seen them cause a massive traffic accident and literally blow up anything they touch earlier in the film. With "E.T." having been released six years earlier, the audience is clearly expected to assume a similar emotional template and feel sorry for the aliens simply for being aliens. Lazy, huh?

So that's it: Eric more or less just drags Mac around, feeding him Coke and Skittles, deciphering his weirdo clues as to where his family is, and trying not to let on that he's dealing with a poorly-articulated puppet. I wish there was something else to the film to redeem it, but even though it's more technically sound than most "worst-ever" movies, the story elicits a blah-some emotional response at best due to scenes of actual peril being limited and all of the characters being illogical buffoons. My personal favorite of these is Eric's mother (Christine Ebersole, Amadeus), who seems pretty nice at first but goes off the condescending deep end when, after Mac's done his thing, she accuses her wheelchair-bound son of turning their home into an atrium overnight - actually assuming that he was capable of moving vast amounts of plants and rocks into the house and even sticking them on the ceiling. Director Stewart Raffil will never be remembered as a hero, but this really is something; how could he deliver a certified comedy of errors that's still so very emotionally numb? Again, the guy's not a genius, but he directed The Ice Pirates, after all - did he blow his creative wad on that one entirely?

As far as Coca-Cola and McDonald's pushing their products in this film, I think that aspect has been blown out of proportion by bloggers - save for the instance when Eric attempts to bait Mac by leading him to a cup of Coke via a trail of straws, which even I have to admit feels really forced. In all, "Mac and Me" isn't outright bad enough for me to include it on the list of worst movies I've ever seen, but it's still best left forgotten by everyone who enjoys halfway-decent cinema.

Now that "E.T." has been remastered, maybe it's time to give this movie a CGI makeover as well. Great strides in product placements have been made since "Mac and Me" originally came out. Guns could be digitally replaced with Happy Meals and Coke cans. Corporate logos can be blanketed over every available surface, as "Josie and the Pussycats" taught us. Well, at least that movie was meant to be ironic.

Seeing ads for this as a kid, I was slightly intrigued, because only fleeting glimpses were shown of "Mac." If memory serves, the same kind of secretive, "less is more" technique had been previously employed by "Harry and the Hendersons." Except Harry was believable, and lovable, while Mac and his family turn out to kind of resemble the rubbery, nightmarish cartoon creatures from "Twilight Zone: The Movie." As disturbing as these knobby, pot bellied aliens were naked, when they get stuffed into some Earth clothes at the end, (probably from Sears) it's just pathetic, like a monkey forced to wear a cowboy outfit, only about twenty times worse.

In `89 or so, a group of us caught this movie on video, and even at our young ages, we were painfully aware of what a crassly commercialized "E.T." rip-off we were seeing. Still, a good time was had laughing at how stupid it was, and it's the same today. There's lots to make fun of, like the out of place musical interludes. "Mac gets chased up a tree by some dogs who think he smells like bacon: Time for a touching love song." The most ludicrous scene is the notorious one at McDonald's where the alien gets passed off as the most creepily articulate teddy bear in existence, and then an entire "spontaneous," highly choreographed dance sequence breaks out of nowhere. Mac's parents seem to have powers over life and death; it's too bad they can't heal the lame also, because "Mac and Me" is super lame.

Yeah yeah, product placements, but what is funny is how "perfectly turned" the products are to the camera. The skittles bag is poured with a near perfect looking bag. The coke cans are turned toward the camera so the logo shows, the girl is mostly always wearing her McDonalds uniform during the movie, etc.

The part I remember most is near the end when wheelchair boy goes boom. His friends bring him over, and one shouts "He's breathing, he's going to be ok". Then another guy comes over, looks at him for literally 2 seconds, and says "There's nothing I can do for him", and hurries off. Everyone starts crying. HELLO? CPR Anyone? This scene was totally not believable, some movies you get teary eyed when the main character dies off, but in this one, I could really care less.

What makes it hilarious is right at the end where you see "We'll be back", thankfully that has yet to happen.