Aliens in the Attic

Perfectly calibrated for the pre-adolescent set, highlighting broad physical comedy and themes of kid empowerment and featuring one of the stars from "High School Musical."

A pointless but ultimately harmless family adventure that doesn't mentally assault the 12-and-over set. (Extra points for being 100 percent fart-joke-free).

Performances are unremarkable but acceptable pretty much across the board, and the vocal talents -- particularly Thomas Haden Church as the belligerent Tazer and Josh Peck as the lovable Sparks -- are well cast.

Robert Hoffman as the boyfriend, who spends most of his time under the marionettelike control of either the aliens or the human children, provides the film's occasional funny moments.

Aliens in the Attic is conveyor-belt family product, an action/adventure/sci-fi/comedy made from the bland corporate DNA of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. It appears designed for families who never leave the mall.

The real problem with this Aliens encounter is that it's patently a Nick at Night midweek movie that inadvertently got greenlighted for a big-screen opening.

Nowhere near as bad as "Coneheads," but still isn't worth your time.

I expected it to have a dumb story and be unfunny, but it turned out to be somewhat funny and amusing. The acting and story are slightly above average.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Aliens in the Attic invades with nonsense. The movie is overly simple and not very good. The script is poor and the acting is bad, the only good aspect is the semi appealing animation.

The protagonist tanks his grades because he does not want to be perceived as a brainiac. The movie itself does not fake being dumb. It is. The acting is abysmal, the script genuinely idiotic and the, let's say "laughs" can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Worst of all - they totally wasted Andy Richter - a genuinly funny guy.

Unfunny, unoriginal, unnecessary. These are the three words that would describe this trash that I wouldn't call a movie. Seeing this is the same as torturing yourself.