Earth Girls Are Easy

There isn't a better time at the movies right now than Earth Girls Are Easy, a delirious pop musical directed by Julien Temple as a widescreen swirl of color and high spirits. Read full review

Earth Girls Are Easy is a 100-proof hoot, an intoxicatingly inventive movie that spins a fresh variation off a familiar theme. It's a high-octane frolic, pure and simple (but never simple-minded), a flick that owes more to ALF than to E.T., and far more to Busby Berkeley than to Rod Steiger. A wacky journey into the cinematic beyond, it defies every label but one: Fun, Fun, Fun. [12 May 1989]

A lighthearted and goofy musical comedy about a love affair between an extraterrestrial and a manicurist. Read full review

This delightful 1989 pop-fantasy musical about Valley girls and extraterrestrials gives the talented English director Julien Temple an opportunity to show his stuff in an all-American context. The results are less ambitious and dazzling than his Absolute Beginners, but loads of fun nevertheless: his satirical yet affectionate view of southern California glitz is full of grace and energy. Read full review

Earth Girls Are Easy may be a classic case of a director getting more out of his material than it really deserves. Temple has spectacular gifts for making musical movies. He is a witty formalist, a light-hearted virtuoso, and, like all the best movie-musical directors, he's able to create images that breathe in tempo with the songs or cut against them jaggedly, exhilaratingly. Read full review

Earth Girls Are Easy, a frisky extraterrestrial romance starring Geena Davis, is the movie equivalent of cheap champagne -- even though it's lousy, it still gives you tickles up the nose. Even at its most rambunctious, the picture just never seems to get going, and if the performers weren't so consistently charming you'd be tempted to pack it in early. Read full review

Forgive the airhead plot that hinges on a spaceship crash-landing in the swimming pool of a Valley-girl manicurist, played by Geena Davis. The fun comes from Temple's protean visual wit and the irresistible charm of Davis, who just won an Oscar for her role in The Accidental Tourist. The agreeably tacky Earth Girls earns points for warmth, color and high spirits. Read full review

Earth Girls Are Easy is 90 minutes of bubble and squeak that doesn't shrink from sharing its subject's vacuousness. But it works often enough. And when it does, it plays like a collision between Zippy and Hairspray. [12 May 1989, p.45]

It's a gentle, occasionally smart little comedy about what happens when three furry spacemen, eager for female companionship after what seems to have been a long voyage from the planet Jhazzala, land in the backyard swimming pool of a recently jilted manicurist in Southern California's San Fernando Valley. [02 June 1989, p.DW5]

With cartoon colors, loony tunes and a kitschy-coo sensibility, Earth Girls Are Easy finally lands in theaters after having distributor trouble. This close encounter under the California sun is fun, fun, fun - until its Beach Party-meets-Splash plot unravels. [12 May 1989, p.6D]

The comedy is hit-and-miss but this is a vibrant, watchable movie. Read full review

With a scatter-shot style that includes lengthy, often lame song-and-dance parodies, as well as special effects, slapstick and satire, the film can't begin to sustain its lunatic premise. But during the lulls between witty scenes, there is always something amusing to look at. Mr. Temple and his collaborators create a near-California so cartoonish and crayon-colored that the film comes to seem like Aliens in Toyland. Read full review

Earth Girls Are Easy is a dizzy, glitzy fish-out-of-water farce about three horny aliens on the make in LA. The two val-gals and their alien ‘dates’ take off for a weekend of LA nightlife, where the visitors’ smooth adaptation to Coast culture is intended by director Julian Temple and his screenwriters to affectionately skewer Tinseltown lifestyles. Read full review

Davis is the perfect empty-headed, enameled-nail airhead Valley inhabitant, and she is so sweet in whatever she does it is difficult not to like her. Expect nothing more than a few laughs and a break from the heat, and Earth Girls Are Easy will not disappoint you. [10 June 1989, p.1D]

Hoping to titillate, while keeping a PG rating, the film opts for tantalizing talk and a constant display of bra-busting females in stiletto heels. The acting here is respectable, but doesn't rise beyond the indifferent script and direction. Read full review

Girls is certainly fun for a time, and Goldblum, Davis, Wayans and others have their moments. But you may find your stomach rumbling from a certain emptiness under the glibness, and when it's time for that inevitable return to the planet Jhazzalan, you may hear yourself breathing a sigh of relief. Read full review