One Paragraph Movie Review: The Man Who Fell to Earth

Three hundred and forty-ninth film: The Man Who Fell To Earth, a film about an alien’s failed mission starring David Bowie which probably wouldn’t be quite as well known if it didn’t. I’ve read reviews that say this movie is misunderstood, but it’s probably fairer to say this movie is only partly understood. The plot and themes, in hindsight — that of an alien visiting Earth to get what he needs to save his own planet but getting sidetracked and corrupted by Earth stuff — are tackled as well as in any comparable film, albeit with way more penises. But it swings and jitters so roughly from comprehensible narrative to odd-for-the-sake-of-odd (like a sex scene in which Bowie and his girlfriend Mary Lou repeatedly fire a gun at each other in a suspended bed in a secret government alien-investigation safehouse) that instead of being tickled and entertained, it eventually becomes tedious. Except — and it’s a huge except — for how Bowie looks the entire time. It’s 1976 and he’s already looking like the absolute best of the 80s, including the best ping-pong-playing outfit this planet and all planets have ever seen. Hmmm. Two sliced-off nipples out of five.