Spielberg liked the story so much that he wanted to have it expanded into a feature film. The film was actually intended to be an episode of Steve Spielberg’s awesome television show Amazing Stories. So when I came across it on Netflix, I wanted to see how it played, thirty years later. It is one of those movies I loved as a kid but hadn’t really seen since. Once I saw it though, I was captivated and would try to catch it every time it was playing on television. At least, I wasn’t really aware of it until it popped up on HBO about a year later. “The quickest way to end a miracle is to ask it why it is… or what it wants.” – Frank Rileyīatteries Not Included sort of came and went in the theater. WilsonĬast: Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Frank McRae, Elizabeth Pena, Dennis Boutsikaris, Michael Carmine, Wendy SchaalĪmblin Entertainment, Universal Pictures, 107 Minutes Written by: Mick Garris, Brad Bird, Matthew Robbins, Brent Maddock, S.S. "Batteries Not Included" is a sweet, cheerful and funny family entertainment.Also stylized as: *batteries not includedĪlso known as: Miracle On 8th Street (international) Designed by Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects wizards, the saucers swoop and vibrate and blink and purr and even have children, which they assemble out of old toasters and other househood appliances. Could this cross-fertilization have been invented by cynical minds in Hollywood? Stranger things have happened.īut Cronyn and Tandy rescue the movie from looking altogether like a retread, and the saucers do their part, too. The Extra-Terrestrial," "Cocoon" and " Short Circuit" - from the first, the notion of playful aliens from the second, the idea that a force from beyond Earth could help make life joyful for old people, and from the third, ideas about how machines can be given personalities and made to seem cute. As characters in the movie, the saucers represent a cross between elements in " E.T. They also take the side of the tenants against the landlords, repair smashed objects and help serve the cheeseburgers in the restaurant. He also coexists peacefully with the other people in the building, including a welfare mother and a janitor who dreams of some day restoring the beautiful tile floors in the hallways.Īfter the flying saucers arrive, they help with such tasks. Cronyn takes care of her and chases her down when she wanders away. How they expect to attract restaurant customers to the only building within blocks is not explained by the movie, but then once we accept the flying saucers there are a lot of questions we won't be asking. The couple is played by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and they have lived here for many years, running the greasy spoon downstairs while the neighborhood changed from a comfortable middle-class community to a blasted heath where theirs is the only building left standing. They grow fond of the old couple, and help them to defend their building from those who would tear it down to build a skyscraper. There is a girl saucer and a boy saucer, and they are about the size of, well, saucers. That is why it is just barely possible, in "Batteries Not Included," to accept the flying saucers that show up one day in the dilapidated bedroom where two old people sleep in one of New York's urban renewal wastelands.
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