Earth to Echo can't shut up. Aiming to be Generation YouTube's answer to E.T. the directorial debut of viral video maven Dave Green is a 100 yard dash of youthful adventuring close encounters and warding off adults who just don't understand. Unlike its Spielbergian inspiration the film's found footage conceit is impervious to hushed moments of maximum wonderment. Earth to Echo drowns in yammering and clunky direction Green battling a camera controlled by three middle school boys to find any semblance of grandeur in his faux documentary frames. But Earth to Echo packs a tremendous amount of heart onto that foundation. In this case the parts are greater than the whole.
BFFs Alex (Teo Halm) Tuck (X Factor rapper Astro ) and Munch (Reese Hartwig) are about to say goodbye their parents displaced by superhighway construction plans. In their final week together the trio of scamps discover a mysterious signal emanating from Alex's house pointing them to a middle of nowhere spot in the Nevada desert. It's the perfect excuse for one more all nighter. With a camcorder spy glasses and anything else that can be used to film the action the boys bike into the unknown hungry for discovery.
And they find it. Under dust and rubble the boys find a small spacecraft carrying an action figure sized robot alien who looks genetically engineered to be the most adorable being in the universe. It floats it bats its eyes it baby coughs because it's all banged up and it answers yes or no questions with a series of beeps.
The kids dub him Echo and vow to help the otherworldly being reconstruct his ship with pieces strewn about town. Writer Henry Gayden appeals to kids by turning Earth to Echo into a game. If the kids follow the signal trail find all the pieces and avert pursuing shadowy figures Echo goes home and they win.
There's pleasure in Earth to Echo's simplicity. Kids will go gaga for Echo's bubbly antics ooo and aah over zippy special effects (about 100 000 times less dense than the sensory overload of a Transformers movie) and see themselves in the companionship of the main trio which grows into a quartet when one of the puzzle pieces takes them into the home of object of Alex's affection Emma (Ella Wahlestedt). Green replicates the goofball broship of Joe Dante's Explorers casting kids who can hold their own in spats of action and comedy. Hartwig is the real discovery channeling a young River Phoenix by way of The Simpsons' Martin Prince.
But the demands of found footage are too aggressive. Already a firecracker living behind a camera forces Tuck to constantly react to everything on screen. Insane Crazy Did you see that What the... Every beat worth hanging on in awe Earth to Echo fills with inane dialogue before whipping the camera to a new location. Green doesn't have much of a choice if his characters are going to run or cower or look frantically around trying to make sense of Echo's chaotic scouring methods our view of the situation must follow.
') // only use the determined w/h if non zero helps with divs that start hidden if (jQuery(' ' videoDomId).width() jQuery(' ' videoDomId).height() 0) swfobject.embedSWF(url videoDomId videoDim.width.toString() videoDim.height.toString() swfVersionStr xiSwfUrlStr flashvars params attributes swfObjectCallback) else swfobject.embedSWF(url videoDomId jQuery(' ' videoDomId).width().toString() jQuery(' ' videoDomId).height().toString() swfVersionStr xiSwfUrlStr flashvars params attributes swfObjectCallback) ).find( a ).click(function(e) window.open(jQuery(this).attr( href ) _parent ) return false )
No comments:
Post a Comment