Review: Aliens in the Attic Zapped by Kickass Kids

Little kids thump tiny space invaders and save the world with a cast that includes Ashley Tisdale

Review in a Hurry: A surprisingly likable execution of a very thin premise: Tiny aliens invade Earth, but find that a small group of kids are more than they can handle. That whole "Mentos in a Coke bottle" trick? Bet you never knew it'd be integral to saving the world.

The Bigger Picture: The plot stays in motion, the actors are fine, sentimentality is kept to a minimum, and the effects are decent. If only more family comedies got so much right. Not as imaginative as The Spiderwick Chronicles, from which it borrows heavily (aliens instead of goblins, but otherwise basically the same deal), but for 86 minutes of mostly solid entertainment, it'll do.

A sullen high-school "mathlete" (Carter Jenkins), his doe-eyed little sister (Ashley Boettcher), their firepower-obsessed cousin (Austin Butler) and two video-game-obsessed twins (Henri and Regan Young) are all that stand between a quartet of obnoxious extraterrestrial mini-Shreks (including one voiced by Thomas Haden Church and another by J.K. Simmons) and a large-scale invasion force. The parents cannot be told, because the alien weapons are highly effective on grown-ups...but fortunately don't work on kids (just go with it; your kids will).

Aside from the obligatory clueless parents, obstacles arise in the form of teenage big sister (Ashley Tisdale) and her obnoxious, lying boyfriend (Robert Hoffman), who's slowly trying to weasel his way into the family's life and his girl's pants. Hoffman is a major find. Previously best known for the Step Up sequel, he gives a physical comedy performance here that shows great promise, as he spends most of the movie subject to the whims of an alien video-game controller that makes him literally bend over backward to humiliate himself.

The stunt-casting of Kevin Nealon, Andy Richter and Tim Meadows among the adults is essentially pointless. Given little to do, they do exactly that, reciting lines any competent actor could have spoken. Only Doris Roberts as grandma gets some good material. Sent into battle against Hoffman's character via a similar video-game controller, she enacts most of the signature moves from Street Fighter II, something not even the Street Fighter movie earlier this year could pull off.

The 180—a Second Opinion: The character of the sensitive, "good" alien is redundant and unnecessary, and the movie slows down whenever he becomes the focus.