*BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED (1987) **1/2 As a society that worships youth and majors in denial, sometimes we have to be reminded what we're doing to old people. Of course the reminders must be gentle, or we'll lose interest. Steven Spielberg produced this, and supposedly didn't direct, but his fingerprints are everywhere. The contrived manipulation, the semi-jubilant references to minor decadence (old people drinking!) that were once surprising in his work...ah, hell, it's a very nice little film that doesn't take itself too seriously, but offers you multiple layers of shallow metaphor (what would you want seemingly omnipotent and helpful aliens to do? flip burgers. what kind of victories can ever be expected by little business against big business? little ones, etc.) if you insist on it. Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn form the heart of it all, and a more sentimental and soulful heart you're unlikely to find. Oh, yeah, she's another one: the only happy person in the entire film is there because she's been chauffeured into it by borderline schizophrenia...there's a wonderfully ironic line early on about the decade and what nobody wants...I often get the sense that Spielberg isn't entirely unlike the Dennis Boutsikaris character-cognizant but flustered and waiting to see if someone can just somehow bail him out. Fingerprints of Spielberg all over, definitely; but neither paw marks nor deep imprints. His minions seem happy enough to sample his most familiar work (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and Gremlins), and mix in a little bit of the other contempo-pop masters (Ghostbusters for the closing feel-good) just to make sure that we understand that they're plagiarizing from enough sources to be respectable. Doesn't matter, it leaves you smiling and it's time well spent. For those of us who like things to conclude in an "and they lived happily ever after" manner. Everyone else can just watch reality tv or the news, depending on their truth threshold.
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