Il Marziano di Natale

I'll echo someone else's comments. I grew up with this movie. Much like watching the Grinch cartoon and listening to the Norad report tracking Santa, this movie was watched whenever it was on the TV. Campy...yes. Low budget...yes. but enjoyable because of the bad makeup, poor special effects and everything hokey. Saw it again last year on a visit back to Canada and thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Le Martien de Noël" ("The Christmas Martian) is a very low budget and cheesy French-Canadian film. The version I saw was dubbed into English and the print was extremely overexposed.

I noticed that several reviewers gave this film a high score and loved it growing up. Well, perhaps you might love the film if you grew up watching it. As for me, I never saw it before today and thought it was a rather silly and cheesy film...sort of like a lower budget "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" in quality. In other words, it's a pretty dopey movie...the sort most people either would never watch or they'd watch it an make fun of it.

The story is set in some small Canadian town. Two young kids happen upon a creepy Martian (he is essentially a guy in a raccoon coat with a net over his face) who has a strong penchant for eating candy. They play together in the snow quite a bit and help him repair his ship so he can head back home.

By most objective standards, this is a bad movie. The acting is amateurish, the costumes pretty cheap and the sound effects rather poor and a bit annoying. But if you enjoy this for nostalgic reasons, more power to you As for me, as an adult seeing it for the first time, it was pretty tough viewing.

I've often wondered if the scene/ concept of creating a trail of Smarties/M&M's candies to lead the alien was copied from this movie by Spielberg in E.T. It's just such a glaring similarity!!

I have seen a French Christmas film titled I Believe in Santa Claus and I have now seen this French Canadian Xmas film and must come to the conclusion that the French like to make really strange holiday films. This thing was just so weird, nothing was really driving this film and what is up with the Martian? What was with the full body fishnet costume?

The story first hears a young man talking about the best day ever and then focuses on two children playing in the snow. In a store a strange man comes in and soon hijinks come as this dude is a Martian and he is flying and soon is the talk of the town! Soon the boy and girl befriend him and try and help repair his ship, steal snowmobiles and plows and fly in a ship that has no windows and only has a horrid video of what they are flying near. What a wonderful day indeed!

The Martian is overly goofy, apparently they are either killers of the human race or act super comedic, there is no in between! The kids do okay, as far as young children go and the rest of the town is even more goofy than the freaking Martian who is named Poo Flower by the way...

So, the thing was not all bad, just has that overacting comedy stuff I do not care for. The kind that almost makes one uncomfortable. The movie looked really good considering it was made in 1971, I was thinking late 70's or early 80's. The effects were not top notch, but I am doubting they were working with a high budget so I will give the film a pass on that front. I will not totally dismiss it, a younger child might enjoy it, but too goofy for my tastes.

Well, it has been a very long time since I have seen this film. In fact it is so long ago that my memory of it is probably more filled with nostalgia rather than reality. But that is probably a good place to begin. If I were 4 or 5 years old as I was when I saw the picture I would seriously impress upon you the qualities of this film. Thinking about it now I am not to sure why?

What I remember is strange events - People flying around on giant match sticks, odd coloured sweets, a strange alien sort of chap and a snowy Canadian landscape. And also the fact that I really enjoyed it at the time (Christmas). Often when you manage to catch a hold of things from your childhood they are not as well made as you remember them, but, if it really sticks in your mind they must have got something right other than just glossy special effects we now come to expect. I would definitely recommend this film as I guess the makers good intentions and hardy endeavours were matched by the resulting unique Christmas fantasy.