Luis and the Aliens

My 9-year-old son watched this at school during lunch because of COVID restrictions. He recommended it for our weekly family movie night so we gave it a go. I watched it with low expectations but it was a fun watch, with many humorous sequences and some decent jeopardy at the end. It’s not going to win any awards but it’s a solid family movie night watch.

Low-budget European children's film about a child dealing with grief after the loss of a parent and neglect from the other parent who's working through his own grief by obsessing about aliens because he was attacked by one as a child. The kid is bullied at school and by the neighbors for being poor and having a weird father, but he takes care of his father because he loves him and misses his mother. A trio of strange, whimsical aliens arrive on Earth from an interstellar cruise ship looking to order a massage mat that was advertised on the home shopping network and the son discovers and befriends them because the father is too tired from staying up all night looking for signs of alien life. Hijinx ensue and the aliens end up assuming the identities of the rich, haughty neighbors across the street and locking up their son and Spanish maid to help the main character Luis avoid getting taken away from his dad by the school principal and a creepy lady from child services. I won't spoil it for you after that, but many humorous things happen and they battle a pretty scary alien at the end which may frighten smaller children. I really like this movie, and my 3 year old daughter absolutely loves it! We discovered it at our local Dollar Tree store for only $1...it's also on Hulu. There is a bit of adult humor with one of the aliens flirting with other aliens and the maid, a bit of violence with slapstick humor, the maid and rich kid being abducted by the good aliens, and the scary alien chasing the father as a boy and then the battle with it at the end using a freeze ray that his father invented. Also some racial stereotypes of the Spanish maid and an Indian ice cream seller with an accent who tells bad dad jokes, but he also turns out to be from outer space and just disguised as an Indian ice cream man. It's blocked from kid's accounts on Hulu, I'm assuming because of the racial stereotypes...Disney did the same thing with many Disney classics on their other service Disney+, but I think that this film is alright.