Movie Review: "Earth to Echo"

Hey again, Movie Fans, and Happy Birthday America!

This week's movie is the family film, "Earth to Echo." This film actually came out a couple days ago, but... I'm lazy so I didn't bother with the review until now.

"Earth to Echo" tells the story of three friends who, the night before a freeway project destroys their neighborhood, embark on a mysterious quest that leads them to an alien life form... and an amazing adventure. The film is shot in something like 'lost footage' style, like "Cloverfield" or "Project X" or dozens of other films that are trying to be unique. It's an interesting quirk, because it let's us see things from the kids perspective, and helps pull us into the action, but sometimes it really stretches reality, as you can imagine.

The 'found footage' gimmick also seems like an attempt to distract you from something that becomes a glaring reality very early on: We've seen this movie before, but better. Now, unoriginality is no serious sin in my book, and at some points it's a blatant homage to great movies like Goonies, E.T. Explorers, and others. Sadly, the comparison only makes it more apparent how generally mediocre it is.

Now, I didn't say bad. I said mediocre. It's like a meal at Denny's. It tastes fine. It will satisfy your basic needs. But you're not going to be sitting around thinking about it for hours after. You're not going to tell your friends about it. And one thing I will say, completely to it's credit, it IS a family film.  Unlike lots of other so-called family films, "Earth to Echo" actually maintains a kid friendly tone.

That's not to say it's childish the entire time... but we don't see a lot of the darker elements that we do see creep into other movies that appear, at least on the surface, to be advertised to kids. Now, as you can imagine, there are disadvantages to this.  The level of danger feels pretty toned down, and for us adults, the action seems kind of tame.  It makes up for this with some well timed humor in the first act, but by the end of the movie, I was ready to see it over.

Parents, when I saw the film surrounded by kids, some of the very young, and none of them seemed too bothered, even by the brief scary parts. Unless you have a very sensitive child I would think it's fine.

And really, parents with kids are the only ones I can recommend this to. No, it's not terrible, but there's a lot better things for adults to spend their time and money on. But if you have a kid, and you want to spend some time munching popcorn without being afraid of some overly violent, or sexual scene skip in, then there are a lot WORSE ways to do it.

Well, that's it for this week. I had to work late tonight, and early tomorrow, so I'm keeping it brief.

Until next time, have fun movie fans!