Earth Girls Are Easy: So quick bright things come to confusion

Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)

Julien Temple sold out. That's the short of it. After such a promising beginning with, well, Absolute Beginners came this turkey. Despite Beginner's cult popularity in the States, it was a bomb in England -- Temple fell into making mainstream rock videos for Culture Club and David Bowie. Arriving at Hollywood, himself as alien as the furry beasts in this film, to reinvigorate his film career was the next choice.

Earth Girls suffers from a problem that plagues so many Hollywood movies. Too many cooks, little identity. I count about three different movies here, all of which go in different directions at differing times. Movie #1 is a rock video musical starring the two-hit wonder and co-writer Julie Brown. Aficionados of Trivial Pursuit: 80's Edition will know Julie as the other Julie Brown - the non-Downtown Julie Brown, a San Fernando Valley Girl who somehow broke the charts with "I'm A Blonde" and its follow-up "Big and Stupid" -- both songs plus a few others are conspicuously placed in Earth Girls almost in Bollywood fashion. The songs rarely have anything to do with the plot but they're colorful and fun, reminiscent of the '80's style song and dance rock videos. We'll call this movie "Julie Brown is Easy"...

Move #2 is the one starring Quirky Hollywood It Couple (of the moment) Jeff Goldblum and his spouse Geena Davis, trying to recreate the magic that they fleetingly captured in The Fly (1986). Their movie is another Beauty and the Beast love story - except this time Goldblum transforms from the Beast, in this case a blue furry alien, into a chest-shaven "hunk", well, at least a hunk in Geena's eyes. Replete with a tribute to The Nutty Professor and some poorly realized 3 Stooges slapstick with his fellow aliens, this 2nd movie is a might bit trite and predictable - a standard Hollywood flick rushing towards a happy ending and thousands of empty popcorn boxes. There there's the sex scene. Well we won't get into though. And even though he is a little more subdued than other films, Jeff Goldblum is still, well, Jeff Goldblum, love him or leave him. There's a whole weird psychology to these Goldblum-Davis films, too, that I'm not sure I wanna go into. This movie is called "Goldblum and Davis -- Together Again, If you Care"

Finally, is the one made by Mr. Temple and his Absolute Beginners cinematographer Oliver Stapleton. It's an expressionistic movie that questions just who the aliens are -- the three horny critters from beyond or the La-La land of Angelyne (the billboard goddess's first movie), stoner-surfer pool guys and the neon billboard bedecked Strip. This movie is a sort of plasticland version of The Brother from Another Planet and a Top-40 Repo Man. The highlight is the aftersex dream that Geena Davis has. It's an over-the-top tribute to 50's alien films and its perhaps the film that might have been had Temple been given more artistic reign. Really, if you get ahold of this immediately fast forward to this scene -- it's awesome and it saves the film from being a total washout. Maybe this film should have been called "Hollywood Films Aren't Easy"...



Each movie foils the other and the result is a mis-mash with some assorted high points and plenty of groaning, reach-for-the-fast-forward moments. Temple is trapped between Julie Brown's self-promotion and the Davis-Goldblum quirk-a-thon and tries to make the best of it. Like Spike Lee's School Daze, the other rock video musical that year, Temple provides plenty of references to past Hollywood movies set with a late '80's pop soundtrack. I do like some of the imagery Temple manages to slip in - the plastic spaceship dropping in a swimming pool, the aliens cavorting through a suburban home, Angelyne & her famous car station and the surfer's wagon getting lodged into the giant donut.

Among the high points:
- The opening scene in the garish alien spaceship is a psychedelic homage to the X-rated Flesh Gordon and '50's EC Comic Books
- Jim Carrey in a pre-fame ensemble part has his moments as Wiploc, the red alien who cleans up well as a surfer dude. Both he and Wayans have a blast satirizing valley culture.
- Proof that Damon Wayans can't dance (a stand-in and special effects save him).
- Fetish factor: A whorish lingerie-clad blonde-wigged Geena "the Amazon" Davis smashing up her cheating boyfriend's kitsch L.A. bachelor pad, microwaving his football and burning his Madonna albums. Mitigating fetish factor: She's singing a schmaltzy song while she's doing it.
- L.A. Observatory converted into the Deca Dance nightclub