Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)

Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)

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Earth Girls Are Easy movie synopsis. Three furry (and funny) aliens travel around the universe in a spaceship and receive a broadcast showing human females. They are fascinated by these shapely creatures and discover that the broadcast came from Southern California on Earth. Meanwhile, Valley girl Valerie Gail feels her cold fiancé Dr.

Ted Gallagher is slipping away and decides to seduce him. Instead, she catches him cheating on her with a nurse, throws him out, smashes his things and refuses to see him again. The aliens’ spaceship crash lands in Valerie’s swimming pool – putting a decided damper on her future wedding plans in Las Vegas. She brings them into her home; and the aliens prove to be quick learners and absorb American popular culture and language through television.

Earth Girls Are Easy is a 1988 American musical romantic-comedy science fiction film that was produced by Tony Garnett, Duncan Henderson, and Terrence E. McNally and was directed by Julien Temple. The film stars Geena Davis, Julie Brown, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans, and Jim Carrey. The plot is based on the song “Earth Girls Are Easy” from Julie Brown’s 1984 mini-album Goddess in Progress.

Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)

Film Review for Earth Girls Are Easy

On its silliest level, ”Earth Girls Are Easy” is about three life-sized, fur-covered creatures – one red, one blue, one yellow – whose spaceship crashes into Geena Davis’s swimming pool. On a slightly less goofy level, it is a nostalgic chance for baby boomers to escape to the toy-and-television culture of their childhoods. Julien Temple’s film is inspired by the Jetsons, flying-saucer movies and old Hollywood musicals seen on television. It is a joyfully chaotic and wildly uneven work that shows Mr. Temple’s roots in music videos.

Valerie (Ms. Davis) is a manicurist with the bright blue fingernails to prove it. She works at the Curl Up and Dye Salon, and worries that her fiance, a handsome doctor named Ted (Charles Rocket), is losing interest in her.

Sure enough, she finds Ted with a nurse (there can’t be too many cliches for this film to mock) and is in despair until the aliens splash down in front of her. Wiploc, the red one (Jim Carrey), and Zeebo, the yellow one (Damon Wayans), are starved for the sight of a woman. Their serious-minded leader, Jeff Goldblum (Mac, the blue one), wants to get home to Jhazzala.

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. When Valerie and her ditsy boss, Candy (Julie Brown), shave off the aliens’ fur and make them over to look like Valley guys, predictable disasters follow, involv ing dead tropical fish and bad driving.

Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)

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.”

Valerie’s house is loaded with grown-ups’ toys, like her red lip-shaped phone. The orange fish-shaped spacecraft blends right in with her other pool floats. She lives in a state where ice cream stores offer 20,001 flavors and there are delicious inventions like low-cal Pop Tarts. Her bottle of Elvis Presley shampoo inspires the still-hairy aliens to look at the picture on the label and make droopy Elvis mouths in the mirror.

Ms. Davis is the film’s best feature, giving straight readings to outrageous lines. ”They’re a band,” she tells Ted with conviction when he wonders why she has brought home three strange men. ”I won them on MTV.” Mr. Goldblum makes his formerly blue alien so endearing – at least compared to the egotistical Earth doctor – that Valerie considers giving up her planet for love. This is the true sequel to ”The Fly,” with Mr. Goldblum once more playing the non-human creature Ms. Davis can’t resist.

And Ms. Brown, who co-wrote the script with Charlie Coffey and Terrence E. McNally (not the playwright), makes the red-haired Candy so outrageous that the aliens love her. Her best scene is purposely crammed in, as extraneous as the songs in all those old musicals. She suddenly turns up as a blond, singing, ”Because I’m blond I don’t have to think/ I talk like a baby and I never pay for drinks.”

”Earth Girls Are Easy,” which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, often works better as a clever idea than a funny film. But when Mr. Temple, who directed the equally erratic but underrated ”Absolute Beginners,” finds a script to match his cleverness and chaotic style, he could be a truly dangerous, first-rate director.

Earth Girls Are Easy Movie Poster (1989)

Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)

Directed by: Julien Temple
Starring: Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Julie Brown, Michael McKean, Charles Rocket, Diane Stilwell, Leslie Morris, Lisa Fuller
Screenplay by: Julie Brown, Charlie Coffey
Production Design by: Dennis Gassner
Cinematography by: Oliver Stapleton
Film Editing by: Richard Halsey
Costume Design by: Linda M. Bass
Set Decoration by: Nancy Haigh
Art Direction by: Dins Danielsen
Music by: Nile Rodgers
Distributed by: Vestron Pictures
Release Date: May 12, 1989

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