Written for RAF News May 2019

Ignoring the conspiracies of his paranoid mother, stoner Riko (Jimi Jackson) stumbles upon an alien spacecraft in the woods and finds that they actually have a lot in common. That is to say: they are mind numbingly stupid and love to smoke.

These other-worldly beings have big blue heads, and shuffle about with their bellies pushed out. This they do whilst on the hunt for human excrement, which they see as gifts, to be smoked. When things couldn’t seem to get much more ridiculous, Riko befriends the aliens and helps them to chase this high whilst a conspiracy blogger hunts them down.

There isn’t much else going on in the small town of Waikato, New Zealand, nor is there in the film and yet it manages to run at an hour and a half. It’s a juvenile concept but the constant swearing indicates that it’s not meant for children, just stoners maybe, at least it couldn’t be accused of being pretentious. The characters of this film would enjoy it, but then Riko and his group are portrayed as half-wits with no aspirations.

The group of lads, who obsess over getting stoned and racing cars (in that order) to fast food outlets, serve the biggest opportunity for comedy but it’s not long before Riko parts ways with them to spend time with the idiot extra-terrestrials. Wearing costumes that don’t allow for expression leaves Jackson to do the heavy lifting, as it resorts to some basic visual gags.

Alien Addiction feels like Dude Where’s My Car?, or rather that it could have been conceived by one it’s characters, with a unbelievably silly story barely holding it together.