Single dad widower scientist Steve accidentally sends an intergalactic zapping thingie which will destroy the planet at the other end unless he sends another one. As he doesn't realise he did it, they send a representative in the form of a hot woman (with a hostile handbag),and he falls for her and marries her. Hi-jinks ensue.This film is very silly but, if you are happy with silliness, it is quite good fun. Dan Aykroyd is likable as the hapless scientist, and a pre-Buffy Alyson Hannigan does very well as his daughter: you can sympathise with her rather than wanting to hit her with a heavy object as is the case with so many movie teens. But Kim Basinger, as alien Celeste, is very funny indeed. It's a shame her gift for comedy wasn't used more.

I have seen this movie numerous times and it does invite the occasional chuckle, but in essence there is nothing all that spectacular about it. A scientist, Dr Mills (Dan Akroyd) is trying to send a message to another star but a freak accident causes the signal to go to a nearby galaxy severely endangering a planet. So they send Celeste (Kim Bassinger) to Earth to find Dr Mills and have him send the signal again. What happens is that Celeste, while trying to pass off normally in Earth (read American) society falls in love with Dr Mills and marries him.The whole point of this movie is to show the pleasures of this world and make us feel happy that we have these pleasures. The aliens have removed all form of pleasure and have become an long lived scientific race. They have no experience of sex, kissing, or even eating a sandwich. This, so the movie says, is what makes Earth a beautiful place. The movie though focuses mostly on the beautiful aspects of Earth, and I do agree that the pleasures that we have is what makes life enjoyable, but it excludes the pain that comes with these pleasures, the pain that keeps our focus away from indulging in the pleasures of Earth and remembering that which comes in heaven (and this is explored more in Shadowlands).As this is an American movie, the pleasures are sort of American, but this movie does not have the ideas of freedom and liberty that American movies try to push, but rather is digs deeper into the base pleasures: sex, food, and laughter. These pleasures are the same no matter what culture you are in. Unfortunately, people do consider such pleasures as distracting from spiritual enlightenment, but the truth is we have these pleasures to make life beautiful, and all of these pleasures were given to us long before the fall of humanity.

I mainly heard of this film because of the leading star, and the fact that this was the first film to feature body double Shelley Michelle, any nudity was cut for pre-watershed TV, but never mind. Anyway, basically slob widower Dr. Steven Mills (Dan Aykroyd) accidentally sends a great surge of energy into outer space, threatening the existence and life on another planet. This other planet has dispatched one of the agents, disguised as a human, named Celeste Martin (Kim Basinger), to sort things out, along with her superior, her talking handbag (voiced by Ann Prentiss). Steven is indeed attracted by Celeste, and with her little knowledge of Earth stuff, he, and in secret the bag, teach her everything she should know, Steven obviously finds her funny and fascinating. Eventually they do get to sex, and Celeste over time (and she was only meant to stay for 24 hours) grows to like Earth. Then there's the marriage, and until she reveals it herself, Steven's daughter Jessie (introducing young American Pie's Alyson Hannigan) was the only person that knew Celeste was an alien, so when Steven does find out, he realises the reason she's there, and helps her. In the end, the bag is destroyed, and instead of Celeste going home and telling about everything Earthy, they take Steven's womanising brother Ron (Jon Lovitz), more specifically because of the alien women taking him, so a happy ending, Ron gets endless women, and Steven, Celeste and Jessie become a proper family. Also starring Joseph Maher as Dr. Lucas Budlong, Seth Green as Fred Glass, Wesley Mann as Grady, Adrian Sparks as Dr. Morosini, Juliette Lewis as Lexie and Harry Shearer as the voice of Carl Sagan. I can agree (with the critics) it is not the story that is important, it is Basinger's charming E.T. character, and there are some good giggly moments, my favourite and most hilarious being Celeste learning to kiss using clips from well known media. Worth watching!

It is sometimes said that men are from Mars and women from Venus, and "My Stepmother is an Alien" is a romantic comedy about two lovers who are, quite literally, from different planets. Dan Aykroyd plays Steve Mills, a scientist searching for extra-terrestrial life. Kim Basinger plays the extra-terrestrial life he succeeds in finding. The basic idea is that one of Mills's experiments results in a beam of light being sent to a distant planet where, by some unexplained freak of physics, it causes catastrophic damage to that planet's gravitational system. By an even odder freak, that damage can only be reversed by another beam of light, so the planet's rulers dispatch the beautiful Celeste to Earth to try and persuade Mills to repeat his experiment. Mills, a lonely widower with a teenage daughter, ends up falling in love with, and then marrying, Celeste, not realising that she is not of this earth. The only person who does realise- hence the title of the film- is Mills's daughter Jessie (played by Alyson Hannigan of "Buffy" fame in her first film appearance).Celeste has supposedly been briefed about life on Earth before her mission, but although the inhabitants of her planet are supposedly very wise their information about Earth is either ludicrously out-of-date or ludicrously inaccurate, and most of the jokes in the film arise from Celeste's misunderstandings about earthlings and their ways. (For example, at a party she helps herself to an ashtray full of fag-ends in the belief that these are something to eat. Her own race appear to subsist on a staple diet of battery acid). During the course of her stay on earth, Celeste discovers a number of things that do not exist on her home planet- most notably sex (her people reproduce asexually), but also sandwiches, Shakespeare, sneezing and Jimmy Durante.Scientists in comedies are often portrayed as batty, eccentric, absent-minded professors (e.g. Robin Williams's character in "Flubber"). Despite his background as a comedian, however, Aykroyd does not play Mills in this way. Indeed, he generally seems to be playing straight man to Basinger's funny woman. Celeste's wayward behaviour does not arouse Mills's suspicions; he is so besotted with her that, whatever she does, he explains away as a Dutch custom (Celeste has told him that she is from the Netherlands) or puts down to lovable eccentricity.Kim Basinger can be a gifted comedienne, as she showed in films like "Blind Date" and "Nadine", but a comedienne is only as good as her material, and here much of the humour falls very flat, although there are some amusing scenes, such as the one where Celeste discovers what kissing is. (She is enlightened by her companion Bag, a talking, one-eyed snake-like creature who lives in her handbag, who shows her a series of film clips involving kissing, all of which she re-enacts with Mills).As other reviewers have pointed out, the plot of "My Stepmother is an Alien" resembles that of "Splash" (which starred the Basinger lookalike Daryl Hannah), but it lacks the earlier film's charm. When it was recently shown on British television, it was advertised as a Sunday afternoon family movie, but much of the humour- especially the love-scene and the scenes involving Mills's disreputable, womanising brother Ron- seems too sexual in nature for most family audiences. On the other hand, the overall tone is too mild and sentimental for the film to work as a bawdy comedy. It is not an outstandingly bad film, but it is difficult to see exactly what the point of it is. 5/10