obj/subj: mac and me (1988).

letterboxd:

★ ★ - (2/5)

imdb:

★ ★ - (3.4/10)

rotten tomatoes:

★ - (7/100)

Mac and Me is a ripoff of E.T. the Extraterrestrial that came out six years after E.T's release. The film was made by McDonald's, and its lead alien character being named Mac perfectly encapsulates why it's become a primary example of the overusage of product placement in media. Those two things, on top of a thousand other factors, have made it one of the most infamous bad movies of its time. Even to this day, people still discuss just how astoundingly awful it manages to be.

infamy, intrigue, and coca-cola.

Ask an average person if they know what Mac and Me is, and they'll shake their head no. But ask a movie nerd about Mac and Me, and their eyes will widen from either terror, disgust, or excitement, the three pillars of a movie that surpasses "so bad it's good" and rolls well into "what the hell is this" territory. My last post was about the movie Good Burger, which ranged completely across the spectrum of zero to five stars from person to person. With a film like this, however, you're either on one side or the other.

This film was despised since it was released over three decades ago. Even putting aside the two most major problems, there are endless other things to nitpick. The alien designs are physically repulsive. The lighting is either overdone or nonexistent. Dialogues or even entire scenes have no reason to exist and therefore no weight. Attempted emotional beats stumble and fall flat on their faces. You'll think "surely it can't get worse than this"- and then it does, over and over and over again, never ceasing to top itself. If there's one thing to rely on with this movie, it's that it takes what you're expecting of it to the next level, always for the worse.

There's a special beauty in being uniquely terrible and being brave enough to flaunt it. That has its own appeal, being able to sit down with friends and laugh at whatever egregious product placement was thrown in out of nowhere or insane plot twist you weren't expecting. Even then, most don't tend to have as many jaw-dropping moments as Mac and Me. It's a movie that prompts interest, leaving you in the dark as to what have prompted people to make this how they did. Of course, between the promotion and it being a ripoff of a beloved, classic film, it's pretty obviously a cash grab. But cash grabs tend to be hollow beyond what they're trying to sell, propping up their product with a flimsy plot and hoping it'll work out. It would have been easy to go down that route while making this movie, but they chose not to, and it earned the filmmakers quite an interesting piece of bad movie history.

personal thoughts

My first exposure to Mac and Me was through the Mystery Science Theater 3000 reboot episode on Netflix. As much as I enjoy MST3K, almost none of the movies they tackle on there resonate with me. Mac and Me did so in a big way. It's the kind of movie that lingers in your brain for a while after you watch it, the kind that you can use as a conversation starter and yell at your friends about how baffling it is that it exists. It prompts the same joy in me that some of my favorite movies of all time do, it just comes from a different place. Bad movies that have the courage to be truly bad are something to behold and admire like nothing else, a special diamond in the rough for you to call your own.