In reality, Petrie (Richie Rich) has crafted a snuffling dog of a comedy that's far too reliant on less-than-amazing CGI effects. Does it matter? Not a whit.) Toss into this mix Hurley as the conniving newswoman Brace Channing and Ebersole as the nosy paramour-next-door, and you have mass comedy chaos, or so the pitch presumably went. (No one appears to have told the writers, Sherry Stoner and Danna Oliver, that SETI - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life - like the proverbial X-Files, has long since been retired by its NASA overlords. Also drafted into assistance is Tim's co-worker Lizzie (Hannah) since Uncle Martin is being pursued by a loopy gang of sci-fi toughs from SETI, led by TV's original Martian Ray Walston and a hyperkinetic Wallace Shawn. With his craft damaged, Lloyd enlists the help of Tim (who introduces this silver-spacesuited wiseacre to the neighbors as his Uncle Martin). The ship is piloted by a renegade Martian played with shameless gusto by Lloyd, an actor who more and more seems to have arrived from some alternate future where all actors mug like Jim Carrey at an awards presentation.
Daniels, mastering the art of the buffaloed double take, fills in for the late Bill Bixby as Santa Barbara television producer Tim O'Hara, who one night witnesses the crash of an alien craft while tooling down the Pacific Coast Highway. This Disneyfied update of the old CBS curiosity, which ran from 1963 to 1966, isn't as embarrassingly trite as, say, Car 54, Where Are You? but neither is it likely to take home any awards in the originality department. That day hasn't come yet, obviously, but it will, and then what? Forward to Quincy, M.E.: The Movie, and Bosom Buddies: Sinister Queen, I suspect. There will come a day when Hollywood finally runs dry of Sixties television shows to adapt to the big screen.
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