A pair of aliens arrive on Earth disguised as cowboys and take over a small pet shop in the middle of the Arizona desert. Terry (Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood) Kiser is the patriarch of a dysfunctional family who are in the Witness Protection Program who move to town in order to hide from the Mob. When his daughter (Leigh Ann Orsi) drops by the pet store, the aliens give her a dog that also happens to be an alien in disguise. More kids get extraterrestrial pets, but they soon realize the cowboy aliens intend to kidnap the town’s children and sell them as pets in a galaxy far, far away.
Pet Shop is a dumb kid’s movie from Charles Band’s Moonbeam Entertainment. As such, I shouldn’t be so hard on it, but it is just plain bad. It’s full of odd elements that never gel together, crappy effects, and irritating performances. The whole Witness Protection subplot is especially incongruous. I mean who thought combining E.T., Explorers, and the ending of Goodfellas was a good idea?
The aliens are mostly annoying and more than a little cheap looking. The dog looks like a deranged Muppet, the rabbit resembles a broken Furby, and the turtle looks like one of those Land Before Time hand puppets they used to sell at Pizza Hut with some minor alterations. The only animal that remotely looks decent is the lizard, which has some surprisingly well-done animatronics for its face and neck. They must’ve blown the effects budget on that guy, because everything else looks like crap. The “human” aliens are pretty pathetic as they have a cyclops eyeball hidden under their cowboy hat that shoots freeze rays.
The kids are all rather annoying, and the adults don’t fare much better. I know this is a kid’s movie, but everyone plays things way too broadly for it to be remotely funny. The only semi-clever part is the broken sign on the pet shop that is missing its “P” so it reads, “ET Shop”. That’s about as funny as the movie ever gets.
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