Earth Girls Are
Easy is a 1988 American
comedy-musical film directed by
Julien Temple. It stars
Geena Davis,
Jeff Goldblum,
Michael McKean,
Julie
Brown, and hitherto largely unknown comedians
Jim Carrey and
Damon
Wayans. The film is marketed with the tagline "An
out-of-this-world, down-to-earth comedy adventure". The film's plot
is based on the song "Earth Girls Are Easy" from Julie Brown's 1984
mini-album
Goddess In
Progress.
Plot summary
The movie begins with three aliens, a blue one, a red one, and a
yellow one, flying in a spaceship. While watching a music
holographic video of a multi-coloured woman, they come across
Earth.
Valerie Gail (Davis) is a
valley girl
manicurist who works for the "Curl Up
& Dye" hair salon. When she feels her cold fiancé Dr. Ted
Gallagher (Rocket) is slipping away from her, she attempts to
seduce him with a new look; instead she catches him cheating on
her. She kicks him out and refuses to see him until the wedding.
The next day, she is sunbathing when a spaceship housing three
aliens crash lands in her pool. Not knowing what to do, she takes
them to her best friend Candy Pink (Brown, who also co-wrote and
co-produced). After shaving off the aliens' fur, they turn out to
be attractive men.
They all go out and party at Los Angeles
nightclubs.
The three aliens — Wiploc (Carrey), the red alien; Zeebo (Wayans),
the yellow alien; and Mac (Goldblum), the blue alien — absorb human
(American) culture through ten minutes of
television, and Valerie takes them out into the
human world. Valerie and Mac discover that they are much better off
together, and escape into space once the ship has been fixed.
Cast
Production
Originally the film was slated to go into production in 1986 for
Warner Bros., but the studio got cold
feet when director Julien Temple's previous movie,
Absolute Beginners, proved to
be a dismal box office failure. The role of Valerie was offered to
some of the era's box-office draws such as
Madonna and
Molly Ringwald, but when they rejected it, WB
dropped the project. Several other studios expressed interested in
producing the movie, but none wanted Temple to direct. Ultimately
French bank
Crédit Lyonnais
agreed to finance the film with Temple at the helm if $4 million
was shaved off of the film's estimated $14 million budget, and the
De Laurentiis
Entertainment Group agreed to distribute it.
Principal photography was finally underway in early 1988 and Temple
brought his own ideas to the table, including peppering the
background with then modern sounding pop songs, featuring an homage
to
The Nutty Professor
and using iconic model/actress
Angelyne in
a brief cameo (the director declared her "the patron Saint of Los
Angeles"), but Temple's studious eye for detail caused delays on
the set, and according to producer Tony Garnett, "The first cut we
had of the picture was a problem." The film underwent more than
five months of post-production tinkering, including the removal of
numerous scenes and the production number "
I Like 'em Big and Stupid" (a
different version of the song plays in the club; the deleted
sequence appears on the DVD extras) and reshoots later commenced
(the song "
Cause I'm a Blonde" was injected into the film
late in the game), by which time the
De Laurentiis Entertainment
Group had filed for bankruptcy.
The finished print of the film had several very positive previews,
which captured the interest of potential distributors
Nelson Entertainment,
New World,
MGM and
20th Century Fox, but ultimately
Vestron Video picked up the distribution
rights.
The movie debuted at the Toronto Film
Festival
in September 1988 and was slated to be released the
following February, but legal entanglements delayed its release
until May 1989.
Reception
The film received generally positive reviews.
Roger Ebert concluded, "
Earth Girls Are
Easy is silly and predictable and as permanent as a feather in
the wind, but I had fun watching it."
Leonard Maltin called it an "infectiously
goofy musical"
and went on to cite some "good laughs and an endearing performance by Davis." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor George Anderson gushed over the absurdity of the movie, declaring the film "is so cheerful about so many stupid things that you cannot, in good conscience, endorse it, but you may be attempted to adopt it." But despite the positive things that were said, many critics simultaneously criticized the film for being "less a movie than a stretched-out, padded [music] video." Box office returns were low -- the film garnered only a little over a third of the $10 million production cost -- but the movie ultimately developed a cult following.
Award nominations
Fantasporto
Independent Spirit
Awards
- Nominated: Best Cinematography, Oliver Stapleton (1990)
Golden Raspberry
Awards
- Nominated: Worst Supporting Actress, Angelyne (1990) (To note, Angelyne appears in the
film for less than two minutes.)
Soundtrack
A soundtrack album was released on
vinyl,
cassette and
CD
by
Sire Records on May 9, 1989 to
coincide with the May 12 release of the film. Most of the songs on
the album are different mixes than were heard in the movie, several
songs from the film were omitted altogether and Geena Davis's song
"
The Ground You Walk On" was replaced with a rendition by
Jill Jones. The album is out of
print.
Royalty's song "Baby Gonna Shake" was issued as a single (available
in several formats with numerous remix variations) and
Hall & Oates' rendition of "
Love Train" was released as a single backed with
the film's title song, performed by
The
N.
Stage show
Beginning on September 16, 2001, there were several staged
reading/performances of a musical play version of the film. Based
on the movie's screenplay and written by Charlie Coffey and Michael
Herrmann, Julie Brown reprised her role of Candy,
Kristin Chenoweth took over the role of
Valerie,
Marc Kudisch assumed the role
of Ted and
Hunter Foster was cast as
Mac. Although costumes and props were utilized, there were no sets
and the actors carried their scripts around the stage -- these
stagings were merely devised to find investors for the show.
The play did not feature any original songs, the performers sang
renditions of '80s pop songs along with several numbers from the
film. The play followed the film's story and scenes pretty closely,
but a lot of new dialogue was written, a few characters were
omitted and there were some other slight deviations here and there.
Audio and video recordings of the September 30, 2002 staging are
circulating, and several video clips from this performance have
surfaced on You Tube.
Despite positive reaction, the timing of the initial staging was
bad (coming mere days after the
September 11 attacks), and even after
subsequent readings, the show never attained the investors needed
to become a full-blown production.
Notable Differences
- Zeebo, Woody and Valerie's nosy neighbor are omitted.
- Candy's role is expanded.
- The dance club is changed to a karaoke bar.
- Ted discovers Mac and Wiploc are aliens much earlier.
- Two security guards (a combination of all of the policemen seen
in the film) attempt to arrest Ted for breaking into his own home,
but they ultimately become cohorts in Ted's attempt to expose the
aliens.
- Valerie is wealthy, having received a million dollars from the
insurance policies of her deceased parents, and she bought the
Curl Up & Dye salon, much to the chagrin of
gold-digger Ted.
Cast
Musical numbers
- Act I
- Act II
- "True Colors" - Mac
- "Atomic" - Valerie
- "Roam" - Entire Cast
- "Just Like Fred Astaire"
- Mac & Valerie
- "'Cause I'm a Blonde" - Candy
- "Should Have Known Better" - Ted
- "Moonblind" - Mac and Valerie
- "Scary Kisses" - Valerie, Mac & Cast
References
External links
Wikis
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