Peter Bradshaw 

Earth to Echo review – a contemporary homage to Steven Spielberg’s ET

This good-natured family movie is smart and dynamic, but lacks the sense of wonder of its inspiration, writes Peter Bradshaw
  
  

2014, EARTH TO ECHO
Earth to Echo lacks ET's innocence of sense of rapture. Photograph: Allstar Picture Library Photograph: Allstar Picture Library

Earth to Echo is a good-natured family movie, which at times looks like Josh Trank's 2012 sci-fi adventure Chronicle. Actually, it is a contemporary homage to Steven Spielberg's masterpiece ET: The Extra Terrestrial. The kids are more knowing and more tech-savvy than the ones in Spielberg's film – it is a "found footage" feature composed of digital video that they are supposedly shooting themselves – though I felt this film lacks the innocence and rapture that made ET so special. Tuck (Brian Bradley), Alex (Teo Halm) and Munch (Reese Hartwig) are very unhappy that their families have been told to move away because their neighbourhood is being redeveloped for a new freeway. But is that the reason? Some disturbance with their smartphones convinces them that something is going on underground and that the authorities have a secret interest in digging up the land their houses are on. Then they make an extra-terrestrial friend and are set on a collision course with the heartless and cynical grownup world. It is a smart, visually dynamic film, but audiences may miss Spielberg's wonderment.

 

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