Starman

There's a myth about John Carpenter, that he's only a horror director. Yes, of the 19 theatrical features he's directed, 9 are horror. But many of those horror movies have other elements to them; The Ward and In The Mouth Of Madness are horror by way of psychological thriller, for instance. And the other half of his filmography goes all over the place, from overt action like Assault On Precinct 13 and the Escape From movies, to straight sci-fi like Dark Star, to genre mash-ups like Big Trouble In Little China and They Live, to ... "comedy" ... in Memoirs Of An Invisible Man. The idea that there's movies "outside" his norm is just silly. Carpenter has no norm. He just makes movies. With all that said, if there is a movie that is the most unlike anything else in his canon, it's Starman. If you wanted to be terribly and inaccurately reductive, the rest of his filmography could be boiled down to sci-fi, horror, and action. Starman is different. Yes, it's rooted in sci-fi, but it is the skeleton upon which the themes of this movie are built, and the themes are far more down to earth than the sci-fi elements would lend themselves to. Starman is, essentially, two things. The first, and probably the lesser of the two elements, is a bare-faced clone of ET. Alien crash lands on Earth, gets involved with an earthling, government finds out and gives chase, alien has to get to a place to get home. Sure, in this the alien is young buff Jeff Bridges instead of a shovel-headed, giraffe-necked creature, and the earthling is Karen Allen instead of a child, but otherwise, it's ET. It just is. And that is one of the weaker parts of this movie. I find ET intensely overrated, but I will say it handles the involvement of the government much better than Starman does. Here, the government goes from curious to murderous in the blink of an eye, but they're also constantly outwitted in ways that are Only In Hollywood plot contrivances. On the one hand, this element is necessary to give some sense of a ticking clock, and provide some excitement in the proceedings, but it still never escapes feeling tacked on. It is the emotional heart of this movie, though, that makes it watchable. Not amazing, but watchable. Starman is about love and loss and letting go. The alien takes the form of Allen's dead husband. Though it is never said how he died, it's clear it was sudden and unexpected and despite the passage of time, she hasn't moved on at all. Meeting the alien, befriending him, and helping him get back to his people provides Karen's character with the opportunity to do what she never had the chance to before: let him go on her terms. Through her experiences with the titular character, she can move on from grief and heal. I love Karen Allen, and this role is tailor-made for her. Her natural warmth and vulnerability provides the necessary humanity this role needs. Jeff Bridges, meanwhile, does a wonderful, if peculiar, job as the alien; he manages to act like something mimicking human behaviors without understanding them fully. It provides some needed levity, but also an otherworldly feel. The one thing that really holds this back for me from being any better, though, is that the way the story is told just isn't that compelling. It ambles along, no real peaks or valleys, hits the beats at a reliable if predictable tempo, and then ends. The story is fine, and the acting makes it touching and sentimental in a sense, but I never felt the story sink its teeth into me. Considering it's almost two hours, that's a lot of movie for a story that moves at the speed of "well, alright, I guess". I'm not saying it's dull or without interest; it's just a movie that has a pace and a tone, and it is resolute in maintaining those, come hell or high water, and you as a viewer have to decide if the acting and watching a woman coming to grips with loss and grief are worth the investment. I think it is, as long as you set your expectations accordingly. This kind of more emotional, measured story is out of Carpenter's wheelhouse, but I'm glad to see he never rested on his laurels. If the choice is between something familiar but uninspired (The Ward, Vampires) or something bold that doesn't quite stick the landing (this), I'll take the latter every time.