I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Starman is certainly a bit of a departure for director John Carpenter. It seems that after the box-office disappointment of The Thing (1982) he decided that his next return to the alien film should be something less scary and more in line with the E.T. (1982) template. The result is a John Carpenter film that is decidedly more gentle natured than we had seen up to that point. After learning about humanity from the space probe Voyager 2 an alien crash lands on Earth and assumes the identity of a dead man. He enlists the reluctant help of the wife of this deceased individual in his mission to return home. Needless to say, the authorities pursue him, hell bent on preventing his departure.This change of pace for Carpenter is another film which shows the care he gave to all his movies. The story is solid, if nothing especially great. But it's nicely shot and paced, with some engaging performances, especially from Karen Allen as the bemused woman taken along for the ride by the alien. Jeff Bridges puts in an original enough turn as the starman, although it is definitely quite surprising he was Oscar nominated for it. In essence this is a road movie with a romantic sub-plot that is based around a sci-fi premise. It's fairly successful in each of its sub-genres and is a very likable piece of work overall. And for what it's worth, I much preferred it to E.T.

When you hear "John Carpenter's 'Starman'." it would be natural to assume that said Starman is an alien from outer space who comes to Earth and eventually eats Wilford Brimley, but in fact this is Carpenter showing us a much different side of himself. His Spielberg side. 'Starman' is certainly Spielbergian, feeling equal parts 'E.T.' and 'Close Encounters', but Carpenter never lets it stray into mimicry. The script isn't quite as sentimental as early Spielberg, but it also lacks Carpenter's trademark cynicism. Instead it feels like a more mature, adult take on the themes explored in 'E.T.'.While skillfully directed and featuring a (mostly) solid script, the bulk of the credit for the movie's success goes to Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen. Bridges' performance at first seems too affected, but as the movie progresses you understand what he was doing and you can clearly see the arc for his character's growth as he becomes more comfortable with his body and begins to learn about being human. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and it's easy to see why. But the real star here is Allen. Perhaps best known as Marion from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', she's the heart and soul of the story, grounding all of the fantastical elements and keeping the focus on the humanity of it.I'd never seen 'Starman', and truthfully had little interest until my friend and I chose the short-lived 'Starman' TV series as the next subject for our blog. And that's what I love so much about going back and watching films like this. You think you know them, but you don't, and that discovery can be incredibly rewarding, as it was here.

Reportedly John Carpenter shot this movie as a way to show people that he could still understand what the audience wanted after the critical and financial disaster of his previous high-profile assignment, The Thing. Whether he proved his point or not is open to interpretation, although the fact that Starman was essentially his last big budget movie during the 80's and the director eventually kept spiraling farther away from the mainstream is probably evidence that this film didn't go as planned either. What Carpenter did accomplish though in the process, is craft the best serious take on an encounter with an alien civilization, at least until Contact came along.Compared to any other of Carpenter's films, Starman is perhaps the most singular and also the most genre-bending of any of his projects. You might have thought he pushed the envelope with Big Trouble in Little China, but Starman goes even further. The story is part alien encounter, part road movie, part romance and manages to mix its elements competently and switch gears expertly, propelled by two great performance by a young Jeff Bridges (this was his first Oscar nomination) and Karen Allen. Production values are also very high. Special effects, although not ubiquitous, are very imaginative and brilliantly executed whenever they occur. There are several shots in this one that have become iconic, such as the Starman transformation sequence early in the film, accomplished through a rare collaboration of two effects masters of the period, Stan Winston and Rick Baker. The movie is also graced with a spectacular score by Jack Nitzsche, elevating scenes like the finale into levels of otherworldly beauty.When it comes to Carpenter films, I consider this to be his finest, even compared to such gems as The Thing and Halloween. The fact that this isn't even remotely a horror film, so far from the director's comfort zone, makes it all the more remarkable. A classic and some of the most intelligent sci-fi you are ever going to find.

John Carpenter's STARMAN is a sympathetic star-crossed romance between an alien aka. Starman (Bridges) and an earth woman Jenny (Allen), a rare item in his otherwise horror and action packed works, it is my second film from him, after the disappointingly topsy-turvy BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986, 5/10). First of all, it is a cruel joke on our earthlings, we set off a welcome message into the outer space, and some unspecified highly-intelligent species responses by sending an explorer to our planet, however, the first thing humans do is shooting the vehicles down, then hunting down the e.t. in order to put him on the operation table for dissection. But don't worry, as annoying as the authoritarian NSA chief and the military ostentation and extravagance, things will not descend to that ground. Jenny is recently widowed and still overindulges in the then-sweet-but-now-tormenting memories of his dead husband Scott, so the intrusion of Starman who regenerates himself into a human form of Scott through his hair kept in Jenny's photo album actually gives an impossible chance for Jenny to fall in love with Scott again, thus despite the initial terror to witness the metamorphosis of an unearthly creature turning into Scott, Jenny accepts him almost instantly as subconsciously she knows that her dream comes true in a supernatural version. The pair drives across the country to reach the picking-up location in Arizona, where a mother-ship will take Starman back as it has planned.En route, the affecting binding progress between them takes a lion's share of the film and romance burgeons inevitably and a nice job done by generously allowing Starman some time to learn in his new form as a male human in this three-day span, the film never intend to be a taut action piece or a CGI-ridden arena for Starman to show off his superpower other than when the plot requires, emotion always comes first, even poetically, which one might find it unexpectedly against Carpenter's grain, Jenny and Starman are each other's savior, once they builds the trust and affections, they are inseparable. As corny as that he resuscitates her from death, cures her infertility and gives her a baby boy, whereas she has the relentless will power to bring him to the appointed venue, to eventually save his life, Carpenter and his two leads pull it off satisfactorily. Bridges garners a surprising Oscar-nomination here, he demonstrates a primitive method as a newcomer habituating, mimicking and grasping human behavior, impressively carries on his otherworldliness through the journey with advanced nuances in gesticulation and language capacity. Allen brings about a force of momentum in her more mundane part, overwhelmed by the frisson of regaining and losing again of her true love, she and Bridges share many intimately heartfelt moments in this fanciful tall-tale, its CGI effects inescapably seem dated, but the kernel of its message - to evoke the basic humanity within us, leaves viewers a somewhat palatable taste which injects the movie a vital strength to be finely appreciated.