Jackson Booth-Millard
In 2017 I was having my 30th birthday, and I thought, what better way to celebrate than to watch a number of films also turning 30 years old, this was one I heard a little about, so I hoped it would be good, produced by Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg. Basically in a dilapidated New York City, East Village apartment building, the tenants of the block are being forced to move out by the owner of a nearby property development, Lacey (Michael Greene), so it can be demolished. Elderly couple Frank (Hume Cronyn) and Faye Riley (Jessica Tandy) manage the apartment building, and the café below it, tenants in the building include artist Mason Baylor (Dennis Boutsikaris), pregnant single mother Marisa Esteval (Elizabeth Peña) and retired boxer Harry Noble (Licence to Kill's Frank McRae). Some of the residents are tormented by Lacey's thugs, led by Carlos (Michael Carmine), the assault convinces them to move out, including Mason's girlfriend Pamela (American Dad's Wendy Schaal) who is tired and advises Mason to quit being an artist and find a steady job, and the Riley's friends Muriel (Jane Hoffman) and Sid Hogensin (Tom Aldredge) who are bribed by Lacey and move to a retirement home in New Jersey. Things look bleak, with Frank thinking of giving in, and Faye's dementia growing, until the appearance of of a pair of small living space ships descending during the night, repairing many broken items as they fly around. In the morning, Frank is amazed to find the vandalised café repaired, putting him and Faye back in business, Faye was the first to see the two aliens, the other residents follow her to see, they take residence in a shed at the top of the building, the residents dub them "The Fix-Its". The Fix-Its scare away Carlos, then Faye and Marisa learn the female alien is pregnant, after consuming many metal and electrical objects, it gives birth to three baby Fix- Its, but one is still born. Faye buries the stillborn, but Harry digs it up, takes it to his apartment, and successfully revives it, taking apart his precious television set, while Frank and Faye have an increase of business, including from the demolition crew, the Fix-Its assist in the kitchen. Mason and Marisa grow closer, Mason feels better about his art, and Marisa's baby is due in 2 to 3 months, musician Hector (Charles Raymond) is the father of Marisa's child visits her, but leaves quickly, with a steady gig in Chicago, Marisa tells Mason their relationship was not working out, but she has developed feelings for Mason, and vice versa. Carlos is unable to prove the existence of the Fix-Its, Lacey is furious with the delays and moves to replace Carlos, in anger Carlos breaks into the building's basement and sabotages the building's pipework and electricity, badly damaging the "father" machine in the process. The residents discover the Fix-It children are missing, they search the city for them, while Faye stays with the "mother" and fixes the "father", when it is repaired the Fix-It parents search for their offspring, they are found with Harry, the reunited machine family then depart from the planet. Tired of the delays, Lacey's subordinate Kovacs (John Pankow), an arsonist, attempts to burn down the building in a staged "accidental fire", Carlos sees this and sabotages the plan to make the entire building explode, but Faye is trapped inside, Carlos manages to rescue her as the fire spreads, the other residents return to find the blazing building. The next morning, the apartment block has been reduced to a smouldering wreck, the construction crew, in respect to Harry, refuse to continue working, to Kovacs' fury. Harry is greeted by the mechanical family during the night, who have recruited countless other Fix-Its for repairs, by the next morning, the entire building has been seamlessly restored to brand new condition. In the end, Lacey's demolition plans are forever cancelled, Kovacs is terminated, Mason and Marisa settle into a relationship, Carlos tries to start a friendship with the Rileys, Faye finally accepts her son has passed away, and some years later, the apartment building still stands, surrounded by bigger developments, and the café has a roaring trade, with new employment brought into the area. Also starring John DiSanti as Gus, MacIntyre Dixon as DeWitt, Doris Belack as Mrs. Thompson and Luis Guzmán as a Bystander. Tandy, Cronyn and the other actors give nice gentle performances, the script is based on one of the episodes of a TV show called Amazing Stories, it is sort of a retread of elements from Cocoon, the special effects are reasonable, the plot very simple, it doesn't quite have the magic of other films about alien creatures making friends with humans, but it is something all the family can warm to, an average science-fiction fantasy. Worth watching!
zyrcona
I remember this film from the '80s and recently bought it on DVD, and it is still an original and fresh idea and a very sweet story. The main characters are an elderly couple Frank and Faye. Faye is unfortunately suffering the early effects of dementia and her husband Frank is her carer. These two characters are very sympathetically written and acted and have a believable backstory -- they have lived all their married life in the ageing city building they are in the story, where they run a café, but now developers want them out so they can demolish the building. The other characters are less developed and not so interesting, a retired boxer, a painter, and a pregnant woman who has a long-distance relationship with the father of her foetus, so the focus is really on the elderly couple. It is refreshing to see a film about this kind of relationship, rather than yet another soggy romance or a generic story about kids as a character backdrop to this kind of fantasy story.The *other* characters in the story are a pair, and later a family, of benevolent biomechanical creatures who construct a nest out of junk on the roof and start repairing broken items about the place and eating others. Some people in other reviews have identified these creatures as 'aliens' or 'spaceships'. While it is speculated initially by the other characters that the creatures may be spaceships for 'tiny aliens' or come from other worlds, when one of them is studied under a magnifying glass by a character, he sees lots of little circuits, and not 'tiny aliens' and since the creatures mate and give birth to offspring this would suggest they are living organisms in their own right. There is also not really anything to support the idea of them being of extraterrestrial origin, and it's probably more likely they are something that came about as part experiment, part natural evolution on Earth, although the question of where they come from is never addressed.A few people have also claimed this film rips off ET and a film called Cocoon. 'ET' is a story about a boy finding an alien creature. I have not seen 'Cocoon' so I read a synopsis of it, and it is a story about elderly people finding a fountain of eternal youth created by aliens. 'Batteries Not Included' to me is nothing like either of these. It is an urban fantasy version of the 'pixies down the garden' trope with an '80s twist on the pixies. And I enjoyed it when I first saw it, and I enjoyed it again more recently. It's a sweet, quirky story and a clever idea.It's a shame it isn't a better-known film, but I suspect there are reasons for that, and there are some problems with it as a film meant to appeal to family audiences. Firstly, the story about Faye's Alzheimer's, even though it is a refreshing change, is by its nature grim. Although the story ends happily, I am left with the expectation that Faye's condition will inevitably deteriorate soon to the point that Frank can no longer care for her and they can't continue to live together in the home they have spent their life in. A similarly grim theme is that when the biomechanical mother gives birth to her 'chicks' one of them is stillborn, although it is later revived by one of the human characters, which is sweet, but young children may get upset or not understand the birth scene.The second problem is the main antagonist, a thug hired by the developer to evict the residents of the property, in that he is extremely violent, breaking into the property wielding axes and cudgels and threatening the residents and smashing up their property. Halfway through the film he unprovokedly attacks, and apparently kills, the father of the little biomechanical family (although he is later repaired by his mate) in a scene that would likely be deeply upsetting for young children, and towards the end he violently assaults a man and sets fire to the building, before somewhat redeeming himself by rescuing Faye from the burning ruins.In summary, this is a delightful film, but may be unsuitable for young or sensitive children due to the violence in what would otherwise be quite a gentle story, and some darker themes.
mark.waltz
This is one of those sweet movies (with a touch of city toughness) that remains as charming today as it did 25 years ago. Called a rip-off of "Close Encounters", "E.T." and "Cocoon" (did anybody dare call "E.T." a rip-off of "Close Encounters"?, which it lightly emulated), "Batteries Not Included" is a family film with an adult touch that is gripping, intense, charmingly corny and a tribute to the love between old people that time cannot tear apart.Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy are the two oldest tenants of a small walk-up and run a diner. They are being bullied by real-estate developers, and a money-hungry thug (Michael Carmine) is determined to get them out so he can get a huge cash settlement from the greedy people who have been paying him off. Other tenants break down and sign the relocation agreement, but the stubborn Cronyn refuses. As the threats get worse, Cronyn, Tandy and their fellow tenants get a little help from somewhere in Steven Spielberg's mind. He didn't direct this, but his production company did produce it, and there is the obvious touch of his hand within the special effects.Tandy's character is suffering from dementia and obviously believes Carmine to be her long dead son. This creates for a touching twist when the film explodes into its dramatic conclusion and gives Carmine some truly multi-dimensional layers to add to his character. The fabulous Doris Belack has an amusing small role, her memory from tons of T.V. soaps (as well as "The Golden Girls" and dozens of movies including "Tootsie" and "She-Devil" embedded in your mind) and the shot at the end is a sign that even in the ruthless corporate world of a metropolis like Manhattan, the meek will inherit the earth and good will ultimately rule over evil.
