Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Alien Xmas’ on Netflix, an Animated Special About an E.T.’s Earth-Christmas Misadventures

Netflix longish short film Alien Xmas is a wannabe/would-be holiday favorite from Stephen, Edward and Charles Chiodo, the sibling trio with a confounding variety of writing, producing and special effects credits on their resumes — Critters, Killer Klowns from Outer Space and something called The Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys, all of which make us children of the ’80s twitch with gleeful fear. Of course, their biggest claim to fame is the stop-motion stuff in Elf, which certainly informs the tone and aesthetic of their new unashamedly kid-friendly animated tale about an E.T.’s Earth-Christmas adventure.

ALIEN XMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The Klepts are a species of extraterrestrials who sucked all the life out of their home planet by taking and taking and taking everything from it. We see a Communion/Close Encounters-type fella pluck the very last flower from the planet’s rocky ground, and I’m pretty sure the flower allegorically represents fossil fuels, trees, animals and other things that we Earthlings routinely consume and exploit with nary a second thought about how it’s all torpedoing all future life on the orb. The Klepts’ materialism has forced them into a spaceship, looking for another planet to plunder shamelessly — so they point the vessel to the big, helpless, gullible planet Earth, a place full of all kinds of worthless crap that’ll be super-easy to steal.

The plan is to send a Klept to the surface and set up an antigravity whatchamajig so all the junk on the surface floats into the stratosphere, making it easier to scoop up. (Maybe it can be rejiggered so it’ll do that only to the Wal-Marts.) A runt Klept named X (voice of Dee Bradley Baker) volunteers, and domineering leader Z (Barbara Goodson) sneers but gives him the chance to prove himself. So he and his robot pal set down adjacent to Christmastown, the North Pole burg populated by You Know Who and his You Know Whats. Right: the chubby guy and his toymaking minion slaves. The littlefolk all live quite happily in subservience to their red-suited overlord, prepping for the big night by firing ribbon and wrapping-paper blasters at all the gifts.

Santa (Keythe Farley) has a new lightspeed rocket sleigh, but it’s on the fritz, so his reindeer aren’t quite unemployed yet. Meanwhile, a little elf named Holly (Kaliayh Rhambo) be bummin’ because her dad has to spend Christmas Eve fixing the supersleigh instead of being at home mainlining cocoa and candy canes with the fam. One of the quirks of the Klepts is, they play dead in the presence of a perceived threat. Grinching around Santa’s HQ for stuff to kife, X stiffens up when he comes across papa elf — who then gives little Holly a neat new stuffed toy as a gift. She snuggles up with X, and his plans to loot the joint are soon waylaid by this weird gooey feeling inside, and this whole endeavor seems to be making its way to a very heartwarming place.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Alien Xmas kleptos from the classics: The Grinch, the claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV specials, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Star Wars Holiday Special because the robot looks kinda like R2-D2, etc.

Performance Worth Watching: There are also puppies here. Puppies! With button eyes and made out of felt!

Memorable Dialogue: “We’ll stuff their stuff into our stuff chambers, and then their stuff will be our stuff!” — George Carlin ghostwrites Z’s hype speech for invading Earth

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Alien Xmas is a vital, hard-hitting commentary on materialism and environmental stewardship. It’s packed with the type of brutal truth that all youngsters need to hear in order to wrest away their precious innocence and inform them of their need to clean up the mess of previous generations. It’s also pretty cute.

OK, so it’s not all this, save for the part about the cuteness. Maybe some of that stuff murmurs in the subtext, but frankly, commentary on holiday materialism rang clear and true decades ago with The Grinch and A Charlie Brown Christmas, rendering repetition unnecessary. So from here on out, I’ll levy my criticism at Alien Xmas’ superficialities: It looks neat, like a cleaned-up, modernized Rudolph. It’s whimsical without being twee. Some of the jokes will entertain the grade-schoolers, while adults will smirk here and there. I caught a whiff of a couple Wallace and Gromitisms, so that’s a good thing. It’s a little slapstick without being overbearing. It’s a bit of a sloppy plot, but also kind of endearing in its loosey-gooseyness. It doesn’t try too hard to be clever. And maybe most importantly, it’s warm enough to thaw an icy humbug or two.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Alien Xmas probably isn’t going to be a perennial classic, but it’s cheery and diverting, two things with great value here in late 2020.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Alien Xmas on Netflix