'Aliens Abducted My Parents And Now I Feel Kinda Left Out' Review: Big Title, Big Heart | Sundance 2023

Aliens Abducted My Parents has trouble avoiding clichés and mixing tropes, leading to inconsistent tone and style.

Thomas Cummins & Will Forte in Aliens Abducted My Parents And Now I Feel Kinda Left Out. Courtesy of Sundance & Visit Films.

Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out is a movie with a big title (best of the fest) and ambition to match, but ultimately fails to hit its major goals. We open on young Calvin (Thomas Cummins) and his father Cyrus (Will Forte) as they track the arrival of Jesper’s Comet, which enters Earth’s atmosphere once every decade. As the two prepare to photograph the comet, Cyrus is forced to run inside, and when Calvin goes to check on him, all we see is a source of blinding lights, and Calvin’s parents have disappeared. Cut to 10 years later, as we pick up with Itsy (Emma Tremblay), a teen whose family is moving to the small town of Pebble Falls. It’s during her first day of school that she teams up with Heather (Landry Townsend) to write a story about the weirdest thing in their town to apply for an internship in New York, which happens to be Calvin (now played by Jacob Buster), who is obsessed with finding the UFO that took his parents.

Emma Tremblay & Jacob Buster in Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out. Courtesy of Sundance & Visit Films.

Aliens Abducted My Parents is clearly created with younger audiences in mind, and for that market, it will likely do well. The movie’s pacing is brisk, as you don’t feel the runtime until the final few minutes when it slows down. The script matches this, being very A->B->C with predictable plot points and beats. The two leads, primarily Jacob Buster, do a good job of fully committing to the bit but get put in positions due to the script that doesn’t work well for them. The chemistry between the two isn’t enough to avoid falling victim to cliché and forced dynamics that don’t land right. However, the script does explore interesting ideas and metaphors, with central arcs and stories being easy to follow and a strong central premise.

Elizabeth Mitchell & Jacob Buster behind the scenes of Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out. Courtesy of Sundance & Visit Films.

The film assembles a strong ensemble, with Itsy’s fart and map-loving little brother, Evan (Kenneth Cummins), and Calvin’s mother (Elizabeth Mitchell). Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before, but it is sweet and enjoyable nonetheless. There are a few jokes that land well, but there are enough to make the film a comedy that’ll work great for kids and those who aim to revisit their childhood with a sense of nostalgia for past films of this genre that had clear influences here. The only clear issue is the repetitive tonal shift as the film has a lack of sense of self and uses tropes from different, sometimes non-cohesive, genres. All things considered, Aliens Abducted My Parents does what it aims to do and will certainly find its audience when the time comes.