Phil the Alien: Mark's Take
06/12/2004 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Amateurish and low-budget skit on film has its moments, but mostly in its first half. The film outstays its welcome. Buy Phil the Alien in the USA - or Buy Phil the Alien in the UK  The Toronto Film Festival has an understandable de facto policy of
encouraging new Canadian filmmakers. Rob Stefaniuk is a promising
local talent. He wrote and directed this film as well as took the
title role and then edited the result. That is a lot for a single
young filmmaker.
He manages each task with professional competence. He has a good
wit and there are many clever touches in this film. But this extended
skit more shows promise than really delivers.
PHIL THE ALIEN is a low-brow film about what happens when an alien
invades a hard-drinking Northern Ontario town. The film is shot
less than artfully on grainy 16mm. It has one redeeming virtue as
a film. It is in genuinely funny. It wears thin in the second half,
but I was laughing out loud in the first half.
The title creature comes from outer space as a horrible, ugly thingee,
but quickly shape-shifts into looking (gasp) like a typical good-old-boy
Canadian. After a run-in with a talking beaver he ends up in a bar
sharing his depression with other typical good old boys. The film
satirizes small-town life where the big entertainment comes in bottles.
Graham Greene, the one actor of more than local stature, plays the
bartender.
Phil makes several friends in town including an intelligent talking
beaver. Things would go well except for the United States Government
getting involved. From a secret base under Niagara Falls they send
out agents to capture the alien. The film has more action later
in the plot, but the humor wears a little thin. This film could
be a lot more polished but the Canadian humor is genuinely funny.
Mark R Leeper
(c) Mark R Leeper 2004 
|
