Also checked out another Netflix Original called Rim of the World. This is your typical summer camp alien invasion movie. You know… that old trope.
The movie follows a group of twelve year old kids as they attend a summer camp called The Rim of the World in Southern California. A lot of typical summer camp comedy stuff goes down as we meet the group of kid “types” (rich kid, average kid, rebel, Chinese runaway, etc.). Then aliens attack Earth and the camp is evacuated except our core group of kids who are accidentally left behind. Pursued by an ooey-gooey sometimes decent but often badly drawn CGI alien, they have to reach the Jet Propulsion Laboraties (JPL) in order to Save the World.
This is a high concept comedy on a fairly low budget. It does what it can with the money it has and the results are sometimes good and sometimes not so much. The distance shots of aerial dogfights and cities in ruins are usually pretty good. The sets are well dressed for a disaster. As noted previously, the alien creature tracking the kids is… well.. they do what they can with a limited budget and sometimes it’s pretty janky.
The film is a comedy though and, to that end, I actually laughed more than I thought I would. I think the kid actors do a really good job with the script they are given. I actually started to like and care for them which is more than I expected, for sure. There’s even room for a cute romance between two of them.
Overall though, I’m grading this one on a curve for ambition, the idea, and the acting. It’s not a great film and has some clunky, awkward moments and some filler that could have been left out. It’s ambitions are sometimes greater than its ability and the film suffers for it. I’d say check it out at least if you have Netflix and want to risk a modestly budgeted sci-fi camp comedy alien invasion flick. You probably know if that sentence is up your alley or not.
Score: 72