Mac and Me

Mac and Me The E.T. rip-off who ends up being filmed at McDonald's. Genre: Adventure Family Fantasy Sci-Fi Directed By: Stewart Raffill Produced By: Mark Damon William B. Kerr R.J. Louis Written By: Steve Feke Stewart Raffill Starring: Christine Ebersole Jonathan Ward Tina Caspary Lauren Stanley Jade Calegory Photography: Color Cinematography: Nick McLean Distributed By: Orion Pictures Release Date: August 5, 1988 (Hong Kong) August 12, 1988 (United States) Runtime: 99 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $13 million Box Office: $6.4 million (domestic) Sequel: Mac and Me 2 (cancelled)

Mac and Me (aka MAC and Me) is a 1988 American science fiction adventure film co-written (with Steve Feke) and directed by Stewart Raffill about a "Mysterious Alien Creature" (MAC) that escapes from nefarious FBI agents and is befriended by a boy who uses a wheelchair due to a spinal condition. Together, they try to find MAC's family, whom he has been separated from. The film has a cult status over the years, holds a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, and has been called one of the worst films ever made. It was also nominated for Worst Picture at the 9th Golden Raspberry Awards, but it lost to Cocktail.

Plot

A young extraterrestrial, separated from its family and stranded on Earth, finds friendship with a boy in a wheelchair.

Why It's Nothing More Than One Giant Ad

1. First and foremost, the entire film premise is a complete rip-off of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, even ripping off the working title for E.T., "E.T. and Me".
2. Cheap special effects. When Eric falls into the water in one scene, you can obviously tell it's a green screening when MAC pops up from the foreground.
3. The aliens' costumes look absolutely hideous.
4. The film is infamous for its huge product placement for McDonald's. There's even a five-minute dance sequence inside a McDonald's restaurant complete with a cameo of Ronald McDonald starring as himself. In fact, the name "MAC" could be a reference to the Mcdonald's signature sandwich, the Big Mac. There's also product placement for Skittles, Coca-Cola, and Sears.
5. Incredibly wooden acting from the human characters.
6. Poorly attempted humor, which is nothing but fart jokes and couch gags.
7. Janet (Eric's mother) is an unlikable character, as she frequently blames Eric for anything bad happening around the house, even though he's wheelchair-bound.
8. Ridiculous ending, where a stray bullet from the cops hits a petrol pump near a supermarket and somehow causes the whole supermarket to blow up. What's more, this somehow kills Eric despite him being nowhere in the building, leading to MAC and his family bringing him back from the dead, in another story element blatantly ripped off from E.T. (even if they do switch things up a bit by having the young boy as the one who seemingly dies, instead of the alien).
   • The originally-filmed ending was even worse. In that ending, a cop accidentally shot Eric dead, which makes more sense than having him killed by the explosion, but is far more disturbing.
   • The new ending was shot incompetently; Eric's unconscious (dead) body was added as a cutout, which clashes horribly with the film. In addition, Michael's line "He's gone?" is poorly dubbed in over his original line "He's dead?"; if you listen carefully, you can hear both clips of "He's dead" and "He's gone" play at the same time.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The infamous scene of Eric falling off a cliff into a lake is unintentionally hilarious, and has been parodied many times in the years since.
2. Good soundtrack, even if a lot of it seems to have been copied from Back to the Future (which had the same composer, Alan Silvestri).
3. Casting someone who was actually disabled in real-life as the lead actor was something very rarely done in Hollywood movies of this era.
4. The aforementioned supermarket explosion does admittedly look very spectacular.
5. It at least holds up better than fellow E.T. ripoff Nukie.
6. It does have a "so bad, it's good" vibe.

Trivia

• The Japanese laserdisc of the movie where one of the scenes is shown the police accidentally shot Eric then MAC and his family saved Eric to remove the bullet and healed him that wasn't from the final cut. The video appears below, reviewed by Phelous.
• As part of a running gag whenever he's a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Conan, Paul Rudd would perform a bait-and-switch by routinely showing the same clip of Eric rolling off the cliff and falling into the lake instead of showing clips from the actual films Rudd was ostensibly promoting.
• There were plans for a sequel because the film ended with a freeze-frame and the words "We'll be back!" superimposed on it, but it was canceled due to the negative reviews and the film being a commercial failure, grossing only $6.4 million.
• Two of the actors Jade Calegory (who played Eric) and Vinnie Torrente (who played Mitford) have no credits after the late 1980s. Although this was their film debut, they made their last appearances in the movies Alien Nation and Death House respectively.
• The film is one of six movies featured in Season 12 (Netflix season 2) of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• Jennifer Aniston made her film debut as one of the dancers in the McDonald's dance scene.

External links

• Mac and Me at the Internet Movie Database
• Mac and Me on Letterboxd
• Mac and Me on Metacritic
• Mac and Me on Rotten Tomatoes

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