Aliens in the Attic

(PG) Fox DVD/BD

The Pearsons go on holidays to a rental house. The family consists of dad, mum, teenage son Tom (Carter Jenkins) and boy-crazy teenage daughter Bethany (Ashley Tisdale). Tom and Bethany bicker, mostly over Bethany’s jock boyfriend. Tom is being picked on for being a brainiac nerd.

For reasons that aren’t quiet explained, extended family members including Nana and jock boyfriend all end up at the house just in time for the kids to discover a team of cartoony-looking CGI alien scouts who have dropped into the attic and begin planning for an invasion.

The kids use every weapon at their disposal — including bubbles, tennis rackets, spud guns, skateboards, Mentos/Diet Coke bombs and years of playing video games — to fend off the aliens and keep the adults from ever having a clue that a trans-terrestrial battle was going on upstairs.

Aliens is your typical “kids save the world” action film. Adults are not really necessary, aside from being the foils and/or comic playthings of the kids.

If there is a “lesson” in the film (and these films do require them), it is that families should stick together or that being a maths-loving nerd is okay (as Tom comes to realise by the end). Perhaps the best lesson is that everyone should try the Mentos-mixed-with-Diet Coke trick: it’s pretty awesome.

Extras across both formats are cute and informative, the most interesting being the fact the entire film was shot in New Zealand. That plus a short which has Ashley Tisdale showing viewers around the film set should appeal solidly to the film’s core demographic.

Adrian Drayton