Morons from Outer Space

Morons from Outer Space
March 29, 1985
Thorn EMI
Comedy, Sci-Fi
VHS
B-

Written by and starring comedy partners Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith (although they don't appear together till the final scene), this silly but never moronic British comedy doesn't feel as fresh as when I first saw it on cable a few years after its release, but it still makes me smile.  Part of the problem is not just that I've seen it before (after all, that didn't hurt Johnny Dangerously), but also that that style of physical comedy and sight gags, with "surprise" elements popping up, has been used so much since then.  (However, the "brick joke" that goes much faster than the TV Tropes' examples still impresses me with its timing.)  Most of the gags actually work better in the closing credits, set to the title tune (sung by the Morons).  Also, the film references are to movies I've either never seen or haven't seen in decades.

Still, it's an amiable if twisted movie.  It takes balls to cast James B. Sikking as gung-ho Col. Raymond Larrabee, CIA, and then kill him off early in the movie.  (He does show up for one of those dead-guy reaction-shots that were apparently popular in the mid-'80s, cf. Johnny Dangerously.)  The trio of moronic aliens, with their Northern accents (sorry, I can't place them more specifically than that, other than non-Liverpudlian), have no redeeming features but they're fun to watch, especially in their New-Wavey rock concert gear.  My favorite performer is Dinsdale Landen, who remains stiff-upper-lip as Commander Grenville Matteson, even when chaos breaks out around him, until he falls for (and serenades) the female alien.  Smith is "the fourth alien" and Jones is their manager.

This time Miriam Margolyes plays the fat little scientist the other scientists try to push through the air shaft; she would of course later become Harry Potter's Herbology teacher.  And Derek Deadman, who's Man in Car, would be the first Tom the Bartender at the Leaky Cauldron.  Peter Whitman, who's Friborg here, was a Yeshiva student in Yentl.  Space Pilot Robin Driscoll would be Actor in Agent's Office in Smith's The Tall Guy.

Any resemblance to Alannah Currie is purely coincidental.