There was no doubt in my mind, going into this movie, that I would hate it. I was actually worried that I wouldn't be able to point out the parts that might work for its target audience due to the fact that I was going to hate it so bad. But I toughened up, put on my objectivity face, and watched it anyway, and after viewing it, I cannot bring myself to say I hate it. This is not a movie that I like, or that any adult will like, but I gotta admit that it accomplishes its goal of providing an hour and twenty minutes' worth of entertainment to kids under the age of fourteen.

Aliens in the Attic is about a family on vacation at their cabin. Soon after they arrive, a squad of little aliens arrives, too, with plans to take over our world, and guns that take over our bodies. Fortunately, the kids are the first ones they encounter, and the kids quickly learn that the aliens' weapons (let's call them "Body Snatcher" guns) are effective only on adults. Therefore, it's up to them to fight off the invasion while hiding it from their parents so that they don't get caught up in it and become remote-controlled zombies. Honestly, you can probably decide right now whether this is your kind of movie.

It was a smart move by the filmmakers to keep the action purely between the kids and the aliens. Watching teenagers fight off aliens with potato guns and fireworks may not exactly appeal to adults, but at least we don't have to watch grown actors try to take seriously a battle against one-foot-tall, insult-yelling aliens in commando suits. The humor is very Home Alone-esque, focusing mostly on the ingenuity of the kids' attack strategies, which naturally rely on rather limited resources. The one-liners, luckily, are few and far-between.

Despite the film's overall competence at remaining entertaining, it does dumb down from time to time, lowering its humor to cheap gags. This almost always occurs when the writers try using the adult characters for comedic effect. The daughter of the family, Bethany, has a boyfriend, Ricky, who is revealed to be older than he claimed and gets shot with a Body Snatcher gun early on, but the children manage to get a hold of the device that controls him. Therefore, for most of the movie he is under their control. Of course this provides for plenty of joke moments, some of which are not bad but most of which are overblown to the point of making him do ridiculous things not because they are believable (even within the confines of the film's level of realism) but because they might get a few giggles. To make it worse, when he's in zombie-mode he wears an annoyingly stupid smile, not because it makes sense but because it is a simple way to get a giggle from every tenth child watching the movie. Then there is a cringe-inducing bit in which their grandmother gets shot by one of the guns and is controlled like a character from a 2-D fighting game. It doesn't get any cheaper than that.

One of the more annoying aspects of the film is the teen-drama subplot, involving Bethany's infatuation with Ricky. The subplot is semi-important to the overall plot, and it is used mostly humorously, but it is painful to watch a teenage girl gush over her boyfriend, no matter what the context. I imagine parents viewing this movie with their kids who are soon to be this age will not be particularly eager to watch this play out, considering they may soon have to deal with similar situations in real life. The good thing about this subplot, though, is that it plays out in a way that exposes Ricky for who he really is and simultaneously liberates Bethany from her infatuation with him. Good lesson? Sure. Good cinema? Eh.

I've discussed more flaws than merits in this review, and I think that reflects the fact that I am not a member of the film's target age range more than it reflects the integrity of the film. It's not hilarious, and it has its share of failed attempts at comedy, but it is overall good enough to at least keep people like me from hating it. If your kids want to see this movie, let 'em watch it. They'll probably forget about it within a week, but if they're of an age at which they think it looks good, I bet they'll like it.