Batteries Not Included movie review (1987)
That is why it is just barely possible, in "Batteries Not Included," to accept the flying saucers that show up one day in the dilapidated bedroom where two old people sleep in one of New York's urban renewal wastelands. These saucers are cute. There is a girl saucer and a boy saucer, and they are about the size of, well, saucers. They like to fix things. They grow fond of the old couple, and help them to defend their building from those who would tear it down to build a skyscraper.
The couple is played by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and they have lived here for many years, running the greasy spoon downstairs while the neighborhood changed from a comfortable middle-class community to a blasted heath where theirs is the only building left standing. How they expect to attract restaurant customers to the only building within blocks is not explained by the movie, but then once we accept the flying saucers there are a lot of questions we won't be asking.
Tandy is a little confused sometimes. Alzheimer's, maybe. Cronyn takes care of her and chases her down when she wanders away. He also coexists peacefully with the other people in the building, including a welfare mother and a janitor who dreams of some day restoring the beautiful tile floors in the hallways.
After the flying saucers arrive, they help with such tasks. They also take the side of the tenants against the landlords, repair smashed objects and help serve the cheeseburgers in the restaurant. As characters in the movie, the saucers represent a cross between elements in "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," "Cocoon" and "Short Circuit" - from the first, the notion of playful aliens; from the second, the idea that a force from beyond Earth could help make life joyful for old people, and from the third, ideas about how machines can be given personalities and made to seem cute. Could this cross-fertilization have been invented by cynical minds in Hollywood? Stranger things have happened.
But Cronyn and Tandy rescue the movie from looking altogether like a retread, and the saucers do their part, too. Designed by Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects wizards, the saucers swoop and vibrate and blink and purr and even have children, which they assemble out of old toasters and other househood appliances. "Batteries Not Included" is a sweet, cheerful and funny family entertainment.
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