When I was growing up, they would show movies on channel 29 on Saturday afternoons when there weren't sporting events to show and one movie they showed a lot, and I mean a lot, was Critters. Needless to say, I have a lot of nostalgia for this silly little monster movie.
Just outside the rural Kansas town of Grover's Bend, a rogue spaceship carrying a horde of little furball monsters known as Krites, or as the humans come to call them, Critters. The Critters make their way across the countryside until they come to the farm belonging to the Brown family. Witnessing the crash, the father, Jay (played by Billy Green Bush) and son Brad (played by Scott Grimes) go out into the field to investigate. After discovering a mostly devoured cow carcass and not much else, they return to the farm, with the Critters in pursuit. The Critters begin to attack the farm house, cutting the power and shooting poisonous quills at the Brown family, first attacking Jay and then later Helen. After Brad rescues his sister April (played by Nadine Van der Velde) from the Barn, where she was making out with her boyfriend (played by Billy Zane), the family takes refuge in their farmhouse and try to fend off further attacks from the Critters. Meanwhile, two intergalactic bounty hunters arrive on the scene with the mission of finding and eradicating the vicious little furballs.
Stephen Herek directed the film and keeps it moving at a nice pace as it wastes no time getting going. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Dominic Muir and the two found a nice balance between scary and funny that made the movie a hoot to watch. The film has some nice flourishes with the unique creature design of the monsters and how they roll around like furry bowling balls. I also appreciated the trigger happy bounty hunters as they make their way through the town searching for the Critters, repeatedly causing chaos and destruction everywhere they go until finally Brad, who had gone for help, finds them and leads them back to his house. There is also a nice touch with an unlikely friendship between Charlie (played by Don Keith Opper), who works on the family's farm and Brad that wound up paying off wonderfully at the end of the film.
There are several reasons why I've always like Critters. One was that it was a fun little creature feature that I remember had me on the edge of the seat as a kid as I watched this family try to fend off these nasty little creatures that were little more than fur and teeth. But the film also had a wicked sense of humor to it at the same time that I also really enjoyed as the film wears it's B-movie roots on it's sleeve. I think that a big part of the appeal watching it as a kid was the fact that the main hero of the movie turns out to be the pre-teen son, Brad. Naturally, this would strike a chord with me as someone of roughly the same age watching it on t.v as this plucky young kid with an affinity for fireworks, including a homemade one that is practically a stick of dynamite (you know that's paying off later), and fights man-eating alien monsters. The film is also, in retrospect, relatively tame with a PG-13 rating and not too violent, while providing plenty of thrills and a brisk pace as the film clocks in at roughly an hour and twenty minutes.
Overall, this is a film that is very much tinted by nostalgia. I'm not sure I could be critical of it if I wanted to. But there is nothing to criticize really. The film is a silly little monster movie and it knows it. I'm able to accept it on those terms and am just as entertained by it now as I was as a kid. There's a scene in the original live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie where one of the Ninja Turtles, Raphael, is seen exiting a theatre showing the movie, muttering, "Where do they come up with this stuff?"
To which I reply, "Shut up, Raph, Critters ruled."
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