Escape from Planet Earth (2013)

Escape from Planet Earth arrives in 2013 from The Weinstein Company, a studio whose name has since acquired associations the film itself could not have anticipated. Directed by Cal Brunker, it concerns the planet Baab, its space program BASA, and two brothers: Scorch, a reckless pilot, and Gary, a cautious mission-control man who follows the rules. Scorch travels to the Dark Planet, which is Earth, and is captured by General Shanker, who runs Area 51 and nurses a grudge against extraterrestrials. The picture opened at number four domestically and grossed $74.6 million against a $40 million budget, a respectable result for a film that critics largely received with a shrug.

The voice cast is diverse in a manner the screenplay never mentions. Craig Robinson, George Lopez, Sofia Vergara, Jessica Alba and Jane Lynch appear as assorted aliens and bureaucrats, their identities treated as casting trivia instead of narrative material. This is ensemble hiring, not a statement. The closest the film comes to a thesis is its villain, who imprisons aliens and sells their inventions (social media, touchscreens, the search engine) for profit. It is a mild jab at military-industrial appropriation, played for plot mechanics, and it stops there.

Kira, Gary's wife, is said to have spent fifteen years as a BASA test pilot, a detail the film raises and then mislays until she needs to subdue a villainess in the third act. The moral concerns family and teamwork, delivered through chases and slapstick. No sermonizing, no cause, no message beyond the value of listening to your brother. A harmless trifle, then, which is its own kind of achievement.