Very well executed

Absolutely brilliant

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Joseph (Christopher M. Brown) inherits a boarding house from his newly deceased mother. He, Joe, is a two-bit criminal who hasn't returned to South Los Angeles for awhile. Yet, that's where the house is. Just as he decides to repair the home and make a go of being a landlord, a "happy" threesome come looking for rooms. They are "whitebread" folks; Charlie (George Wendt) the dad, Mother Rhonda (Shanna Reed), and lovely young adult daughter Daphne. Looking like they just stepped out of the Donna Reed show, Joe is perplexed about why they would want rooms in this location. Yet, rent to them he does, in part because Daphne is SO beautiful. What isn't known is that they are aliens on vacation who chose this planet and this rough neighborhood so they could do what they like best. You guessed it, they just love bumping off the bad guys of any world. So, even as they take "we were here" pictures with the Skid Row homeless, they also take down any muggers or lowlifes that cross their path. This, while Joseph takes out Daphne and romances her. Will anyone discover their, uh, big secret? This absurdly funny movie is a minor hoot, with Wendt, Reed, and Brown doing nice work. As it was a television film, the production values are not those of a feature film but they are acceptable nonetheless. Costumes are nice, especially Rhonda's Betty Crocker look while the sets are typical of urban life. However, since MOST of the bad dudes they take down are African American, the film is subtly racist, even though Joseph is shown as a guy trying to do things the right way. Maybe it would have been better to have the alien couple land on Wall Street and take down a few of those "white collar" dirtbags. Nevertheless, most folks will laugh over these Alien Avengers.

For a movie with a close-to-nothing budget, this is surprisingly good. Special effects are somewhere between cheap and nonexistent, the whole movie is carried by the actors and the script.But both the actors and the script are good. George Wendt (as Charlie) is a John Goodman-lookalike and uses that very well. Shanna Reed (Rhonda) is his happy tourist wife, if possible more gleeful about their backstreet adventures. Anastasia Sakelaris plays their beautiful daughter Daphne, also really well, and Christopher M. Brown is the "straight man" Joseph, the nice black guy who tries to understand what is happening around him. Joseph is a particularly vital part, the straight man who gives us a normal person point of view to the events, and also the character who benefits from the aliens. These four actors are the backbone that carries the film.The obvious B-movie status and low budget limits the possibilities, and sometimes the lack of effects is disturbing. But most of the time it doesn't matter too much (as long as you are prepared for it). We see some blood, and hear some profane language plus see some semi-nudity, but I was happy to see that neither were over-used but used for a reason. And this is one sign of the good script. It doesn't need to use cheap unmotivated sex and under-the-belt-jokes, it uses these themes sparingly in logical and therefore funny ways.I find it amusing to compare the movie to Predator 2. The basic plots is the same, aliens come to the slum to hunt some wildlife. But from that point, they are totally different. Imagine a Predator posing by the victim, smiling, being photographed with a cheap tourist camera. And imagine it walking around in the open, looking like an average tourist. Hard to imagine? But there you have the basic premise. Same... but totally different.

Wow...what a great movie! The first 15 minutes are a little heavy handed, with the whole "struggling young black man" thing. Trying to stay true to himself without becoming a crack dealer and then, his momma dies. Bummer. But once George Wendt and family show up it gets friggin' righteous! They really look like they had a good time making this movie. When George rips off a skinheads leg and beats him over the head with it, well, that's just golden...Roger Corman is hit or miss (but he does pump out, like, 17 movies a year) but he's pretty much on the nose with this flick. I've not seen the sequel, but I'll be seeking it out. The dialogue is pretty great and the bloodshed is AOK. The wife is by far the best, with her smokes, cat eye sunglasses and camera. If you like the idea of the mean streets of South LA being cleaned up by a pack of retro aliens this is a dream come true. Also worth it is the wife's dressing down of the druggies in the crack house, and the explanation given to an inmate as to why they get visitation rights with each other. "Cause we're special...and you're just a piece of sh*t child molester that should have been castrated with a dull knife before being executed", the line is delivered with the gleeful anticipation of a 9 year old on Christmas morning...truly, da bomb.

Ok,This movie is WEIRD. It tells the story of a family of aliens that come to earth on vacation. There they meet a guy who has just inherited his grandmother's hotel (which is in the middle of a "you don't want to live here" suburb riddled with crime).They seem quite nice and fix up the old hotel in one night(!), but then we discover the darker side of these people. They LOVE violence (it's not done where they come from).So they go out regularly to find trouble and have some nice violence, you could say.It's not a good movie, but very original. Funny to see norm doing something else than cheers for a change. 7.