This movie made me sad. When I see an alien in a movie my first thought is usually “When the fuck is Will Smith gonna nuke this bastard already?!” or “Damn, Joan Rivers looks rough in HD” But David Bowie as an alien? Depressing and kinda believable. He’s very tall, painfully thin, detached, and has an accent. Done, he’s an alien. Bowie plays Thomas Jerome Newton a humanoid alien that comes to our world with pipe dreams of transporting our water to his home planet. He’s left his wife and children to save his planet from a drought.
Bowie hides among us as high powered business man with a hair color that let’s be honest, corporate America would never except. He makes a few friends: a bubbly but lonely hotel maid named Mary Jo, a horny professor played by Rip Torn (BTW best name ever) and lots of warm martinis and television sets. After he is ratted out, the government traps him inside of a hotel to perform tests on him and basically get him wasted everyday. SPOILER ALERT: By the end of the film Bowie is an alien trapped on earth. A pathetic miserable drunk hanging out at what looks like a rooftop version of Applebee’s. So fucking sad.
Please note: I have spared you form the nightmarish images of a naked David Bowie.
I promise you it ain’t pretty.
