My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)

My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988) – Awfully Good

November 22nd 2021, 11:00am

My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)

DIRECTOR: Richard Benjamin / CAST: Dan Aykroyd, Kim Basinger, Jon Lovitz

“She’s gorgeous, and she’s never been kissed. Needless to say, she’s from another planet.”

Now that Ghostbusters : Afterlife has finally hit theaters and reunited the surviving Busters, Awfully Good Movies is celebrating with Dan Aykroyd’s less successful paranormal comedy of the 80s, My Stepmother is an Alien!

With Aykroyd being a real life enthusiast of ghosts and aliens, he was the perfect choice to play a widowed astrophysicist who finds both alien life and a new lover when his signal to space attracts a sexy alien played by Kim Basinger at the peak of her hotness, who must marry the doctor to gain his help in saving her dying planet. But with this movie originally written as a dark sci-fi allegory for child abuse by a guy who claimed to have actually encountered a child abusing alien–not even kidding, folks–things are bound to get real weird even without Aykroyd throwing any diaper wearing baby-men into the script.

Basinger’s got a penis shaped alien puppet sidekick who hides inside her purse and teaches her how to seduce the earthling through porn magazines and outdated pop culture catchphrases; Aykroyd’s daughter (a pre-teen Alyson Hannigan) is hellbent on getting her dad laid again before she goes off to band camp; and Aykroyd’s sleazeball brother, played by his fellow SNL alumni Jon Lovitz, secretly wants Basinger all for himself. And did I forget to mention the voice cameo from Harry Shearer as Carl Sagan? It may make for a very hackneyed and confusing comedy, but it sure is an awfully good one whose synth pop soundtrack and cameos from a pre-stardom Seth Green and Juliette Lewis will bring back fond memories of the 80s. Don’t hold your breath for Aykroyd to bring this one back for a reboot, though, because no one wants to see MY STEPMOTHER IS APPROACHING 70 AND NEEDS HELP GOING TO THE TOILET.