Viking Night: Starman
By Bruce Hall
August 9, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The same John Carpenter who is one of my favorite directors. The guy whose films take up a lot of space on my top all-time list. I love most of his films, I’ve seen them and even memorized large chunks of some of them. And somehow, I’d completely forgotten about Starman. And hey, let’s not forget that it stars Jeff Bridges, one of my favorite actors and Karen Allen, nearly as beloved to the world’s nerds as Carrie Fisher. There’s even a guy named Dirk Blocker in the cast.
That’s a fantastic name. It’s going to be the name of the lead in the spiritual successor to The Longest Yard that I just now decided to write.
Starman was famously developed at Columbia at the same time as a certain film about a certain big-headed alien that loved Reese's Pieces and Drew Barrymore. That other movie ended up at another studio, where it made so much money that the Soviet Union collapsed. Meanwhile Starman sat on a shelf for a bit, before hitting screens in 1984. It did well, earned favorable reviews, and even got some love from the Academy. But it didn’t help us with the Russians, so we all kind of forgot about it.
That’s hilarious to me, because I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve never liked E.T., and I didn’t like it when I was a kid. I kept calling for the FBI agents to open fire on the children, because I thought it was stupid that law enforcement officers could be defeated by children. This is what I like about Starman. The elevator pitch for Starman is basically that’s it’s “E.T. for grownups.” That’s because Starman was not written for people who walk around with funky milk on their upper lip all day.
Starman is about things like love, and death, and how friendly aliens can help us understand these things better. Karen Allen plays Jenny, a recent widow who is struggling to adjust to her loss. She and her husband Scott (Jeff Bridges) were a very close, loving couple. We know this because John Carpenter does an outstanding job of telling us everything we need to know with just a few beautiful shots of Jenny losing herself in a bottle of wine and a stack of old home movies. But she’s wistful rather than forlorn; there’s nothing dark or suggestive about Starman on any level.
The funny thing is, Carpenter has always excelled at identifying the emotions behind things. You just don’t always notice it because he tends to make movies with walking crab heads, snarky vampires and Snake Plissken in them (Snake had no time for emotions, you see). But let me tell you - I last saw Starman under circumstances that didn’t lend themselves well to memory. So I can legitimately say I won’t soon forget the first time I saw a baby turn into Jeff Bridges while Karen Allen passed out in her underwear holding a gun in her lap.
Sorry, let me back up a bit. Way back before most of you were born, America sent a couple of probes named Voyager into deep space. They carried with them directions back to Earth, and an invitation to visit. That part of the story is actually very true (so you can blame Jimmy Carter when the Decepticons arrive).
The made-up part is where the Air Force shoots down the first spacecraft to visit. The alien aboard makes its way to Jenny’s cabin, where it takes the form of her late husband based on items it finds around the house. When he first appears to Jenny, Allen must process a kaleidoscope of emotion, with a camera inches from her face and a big sweaty Teamster standing behind it. It’s an almost mesmerizing sequence that should have been the stupidest thing that’s ever happened, but it’s not. It works on a satisfyingly benign level, and it sets the tone for the whole film.
Even the alien’s attitude when he calls home is almost cheerful. Oh well, turns out they’re dicks. Come pick me up, will you?
The problem is that the government is very interested in finding the Starman. Mark Shermin (Charles Martin Smith) is a benevolent government scientist who nearly wets himself at the opportunity to study the visitor. Unfortunately his boss, hard nosed NSA director Fox (Richard Jaeckel) is almost comically obsessed with capturing and dissecting the alien. I say “almost” because Jaeckel’s performance is at times, legitimately intimidating. Remember how you were tempted to laugh at Cruella DeVille, until you realized that - holy shit - she’s really gonna make a coat out of those puppies!
I know, timely reference. But as I said, this sounds - particularly if you’ve never seen it - like the second most unholy love-child-insane idea ever proposed for a film. The only thing crazier would be this, but with a cast of all chimpanzees. Insane, poo-throwing, milk-drinking chimpanzees. Carpenter, however, avoids the ape family and makes the meat of the film about Jenny and Starman’s weirdly unique relationship.
Jenny is initially terrified of Starman, and considers him an abomination (possibly Dead Husband Cloning related). She makes considerable effort to escape, despite her companion’s good-natured efforts to prevent it. Starman assumes his emissary mission to be a dud, and simply wants a ride to a site in Arizona, where his people are scheduled to retrieve him. Since this is a well written story, there’s a timetable - three days, and Starman’s ride will leave without him, effectively sentencing him to death.
Again, that sounds like enough cheese to fill Giants Stadium with cheese and feed all of New Jersey nachos for a week. But the rewarding thing about Starman is that it rather intelligently uses this as the backdrop for a surprisingly simple story. And it’s a surprisingly touching one, about a stricken widow and a disillusioned traveler finding what they were looking for in one another.
It just wouldn’t be as dramatic without someone chasing them.
Starman is a just refreshingly delightful (or...delightfully refreshing?) love story. John Carpenter does us all a favor by remembering that love is a more complex emotion than what we’re used to seeing in movies. But if Carpenter found the heart of the piece, the soul of it is Bridges (who talks like a hard-of-hearing Forrest Gump; it’s adorable) and Allen. They are what make Starman a Must Own Film, in my book. And by that I don’t mean “buy a digital copy.”
You need to buy a Blu-ray player if you don’t already have one, and purchase a physical copy of Starman that you can hold in your hands. You deserve it, because you’ll watch it more than once.