Mac and Me – Film Review

A Mysterious Alien Creature (MAC) escaping from nefarious NASA agents, is befriended by a young boy in a wheelchair. Together, they try to find MAC’s family from whom he has been separated.

Where does one even try to begin when it comes to describing a movie such as Stewart Raffill‘s Mac and Me? From the moment it opens to the moment it ends, the film is a complete monstrosity and is shockingly boring despite sounding absolutely off-the-walls crazy if you described it on paper.

I mean seriously, this movie focuses on a Mysterious Alien Creature (MAC) who comes down to Earth where he meets a young boy. Sound familiar? Well, it should because Steven Spielberg had already done that concept before Mac and Me in the form of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, a significantly better film in quite literally every aspect.

At the very least, though, this movie could have tried to be funny and lighthearted. It could have tried to be strange and weird and bonkers, but instead, we are “treated” to one of the most horrifically boring movies I have honestly ever seen. The first fifty minutes of this ninety-nine-minute movie is basically just scenes where we watch MAC and the young boy Eric Cruise just kind of moseying around doing random things.

And despite the fact that MAC is a huge troublemaker and keeps causing damage to the Cruise household, for some reason, nobody finds him for the majority of the movie. They just kind of assume that something else is causing these strange things to happen. In one absurdly hilarious scene, the mother tells Eric that it was probably just “the neighborhood kids.”

To be honest with you, the most entertaining scene in this entire film is a scene in which Eric is wheeling around in his wheelchair outside near his house, right beside a huge slope which eventually leads to a cliff. Something captures his attention, causing him to wheel forward. However… he loses control of his wheelchair and all of a sudden, we are shown one of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes in the history of film.

But the problem here is that the scene was not meant to be funny. There’s also an outrageously bizarre scene a little over halfway through the movie where we simply watch a huge group of people dance around inside of a McDonald’s for several minutes. Why this scene was ever even approved and shot is anybody’s guess.

And what’s up with the insane amount of advertisement on display here for Coca-Cola? Seriously. It seemed to me like the filmmakers tried to shove the product down our throats in practically every single scene without shame. It’s kind of funny but it’s also kind of egregious.

Mac and Me is not a good movie by any means. It’s fantastically boring and features some of the worst screenwriting I’ve ever seen, but I do recommend putting it on just so you can laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.