CERT: 18 / PLATFORM: STREAMING/ RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 12TH
New Zealand is rapidly gaining a reputation for the place where quirky genre movies come from. With the likes of Peter Jackson, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi as inspiration, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Alien Addiction is something different, though; it’s an over-the-top low-budget gross-out comedy about stoners who live in the middle of nowhere who team up with turd-sniffing aliens who also like getting high.
Kiwi comedian Jimi Jackson plays Riko, the town simpleton who hangs out with equally intelligent friends. Much of the movie is an excuse for Jackson to clown around and pull wacky hijinks whilst gurning his way from one scene to another. He’s a pleasure to watch as his comic-timing is excellent and his slapstick is very well done. The plot, such as it is, revolves about two idiotic aliens who have become addicted to smoking human excrement. Rikko tries to help them as best he can whilst a pair of equally daft alien conspiracy nut try to ruin the whole thing in order to make a quick buck.
Alien Addiction has all the hallmarks of a classic stoner movie. It’s dumb, it’s crammed with gags, the actors are awkward and weird and the plot doesn’t require much of an attention span. The humour is veers from the scatological to the slapstick and though there are the occasional missteps in tone it’s mostly just stupid fun. There’s no depth here, and barely any intelligence. This is 90 minutes of utter tomfoolery and it only works if you’re willing to turn off your brain. It’s one of the crudest, silliest movies we’ve seen this decade.
