My Stepmother Is an Alien

My Stepmother Is an Alien is solid, wide-appeal holiday fare. It makes the best use of Aykroyd’s warmth and proven talents in quite some time, and it does even more for Basinger, showing that she can be as funny and smart as she is sexy. Read full review

The title sounds like just about all you need to know: another stupid premise-heavy comedy. However, director Richard Benjamin and a sharp cast have managed to make a silly premise if not believable, then plausible and funny. [17 Dec 1988, p.1D]

Directed by Richard Benjamin, this is an inordinately silly comedy that manages to be pretty likable if one can get past some of its harebrained premises. Read full review

My Stepmother Is an Alien is a great idea for a movie, but it seems to have stalled at the idea stage. Read full review

Unlike the screenwriters, who often cross the thin line between wit and silliness as they outline Celeste's neo-I Love Lucy-isms, Miss Basinger reveals unfailingly sound instincts for comedy. Read full review

The film offers several entertaining sequences, but Splash it ain't, for while that film took a similar scenario and beautifully conveyed romantic notions of innocence, this is marred by cruel and juvenile gags. Read full review

It falls far short of the lighthandedness, whimsy and feeling it needs to override its slightness. You keep wanting to like it, to match the good will coming out of the actors, but the writing keeps shoving its fabricated nothingness in your face. [09 Dec 1988, p.36]

As a filmmaker, Benjamin is capable of the occasional light, graceful touch, but the overall view eludes him; just as he was unable to bring out the sly blend of satire and psychological drama in Bo Goldman's script for Little Nikita, he's unable to find any harmony of tone in this scattered, cacophonous material. [09 Dec 1988, p.B]

Basinger almost redeems this mess: whether feasting on battery fluid or learning to kiss from a tourist-guide hologram, her earnest ditziness is out of this world. [02 Jan 1989, p.58]

Even Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger together, acting their hearts out, can't move this turgid script to liftoff velocity. [15 Dec 1988]

My Stepmother Is an Alien is a failed attempt to mix many of the film genres associated with the 'alien' idea into a sprightly romp. Read full review

The worst of '88's major Christmas pics has scientist Dan Aykroyd inadvertently beaming Kim Basinger to Earth in a bum experiment; the result is as tired as its title, though Basinger gives another smooth comic performance. [09 Jun 1989, p.3D]

My Stepmother Is an Alien, the new Richard Benjamin film starring Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger, is E.T. with hormones, a landlocked Splash. No, that actually sounds like fun. And it would be wrong to suggest that this thing is fun. Very wrong. Read full review

Had it actually been told from the perspective of the scientist's daughter, as the title suggests, it might have been more appealing, but instead a predictable, amateurish script shifts the focus elsewhere. Read full review