A Southern California girl befriends three furry aliens after their spaceship lands in her swimming pool.
“Earth Girls Are Easy” is one of those films I wish never had been made. As a teenager in the ’80s, I barely managed to get through a screening of it and had wholly pushed it out of my head it was so bad, so when the lovely folks at Lionsgate sent me a review copy, I figured enough time had passed, and since I am now considered an adult, maybe my view on it would be more cultivated. Wrong! “Earth Girls Are Easy” is undoubtedly one of the worst films ever made. EVER! No combined talents of Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, and Damon Wayans could save this steaming pile of…dog doo. See what I did there? Instead of calling it a steaming pile of shit, I said “dog doo,” so while it may not have been very mature, I was being as restrained as I could be. Seriously, I honestly don’t know how this got made. And with a budget of $10,000,000 million.
Geena Davis plays Valerie, a manicurist who feels that her fiancé, Dr. Ted Gallagher (Charles Rocket), is falling out of love with her. Hence, she decides to get a makeover and seduce him, only to discover he is having an affair with a nurse from the hospital where he works. She kicks him to the curb, and then three fur-covered aliens, Mac (Jeff Goldblum), Wiploc (Jim Carrey), and Zeebo (Damon Wayans), literally crashland their small spaceship into Valerie’s backyard swimming pool. Initially scared of their fuzzy, kaleidoscopic appearance, she involves her best friend, Candy (Julie Brown), who shears their flocculent exterior to reveal attractive human-looking men. As humans and aliens try to co-exist, Valerie realizes she is developing feelings for Mac, but can an alien-human relationship work? Will she take back the sniveling, sycophantic Ted? Will she leave earth to travel back with them to their home planet, Jhazalla? Who cares!
There is absolutely nothing funny about “Earth Girls Are Easy.” Some might say it’s generational; you had to be there in the ’80s to get the humor. I was there in the ’80s; even back then, it wasn’t funny. Plenty of movies from that decade still hold up well, but this is not one of them. I still can’t comprehend how Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum, having starred together in David Cronenberg’s cult classic, “The Fly,” in 1986, could read this script and say, “This is it! This is the follow-up we need to make together because it’s so damn good!” Even Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans, who would co-star together two years later in the hit TV show, “In Living Color,” are embarrassingly bad as they are relegated to making some of the most annoying noises and screeches on the planet, a way of communicating with each other.
Julien Temple, who directed the Sex Pistols documentary “The Great Rock’ n’ Roll Swindle,” “The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball,” and the entertaining “Absolute Beginners,” here, seems to be lost with the film’s theme and comedic essence, or lack thereof. There appears to be no point or trajectory to the story; it’s almost as if it was made improvisationally with just a bare-bones outline to help guide the cast and crew. There are funnier titles from the 1980s that would be worth bringing back, but “Earth Girls Are Easy” is not one of them, and I fail to understand how it managed to secure a special edition release filled with behind-the-scenes extras and commentaries. Hopefully, Lionsgate and Vestron will invest in a better selection of titles.
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