Melmac Attack

It's not really being reported as a "major" entertainment story, but Seth MacFarlane's "Ted" is probably going to end up being one of the biggest hits of the year - it's actually doing bigger business than "The Dark Knight Rises" in a lot of Europe right now - even moreso given it cost so relatively little to actually make.

That kind of impact makes waves, and this is probably the first visible one: "ALF" is heading to the big screen.




If you're under the age of... I dunno, 20 maybe?, this is quite possibly (pardon the pun) totally alien to you: "ALF" ("Alien Life Form") was a sitcom in the 80s that was HUGE for about two years then pretty-much fell off the planet. Basic pitch: "What if E.T. was an obnoxious troublemaking goof and a whole family was hiding him instead of just a kid?" Pupeteer Paul Fusco voiced and performed the title character (he's supposedly being sought for the movie, though the charcter will probably be CGI), a child-sized furry alien who was the last-survivor of the recently-exploded planet Melmac and wound up living with a sitcom-standard suburban family: Exasperated/dweeby dad, nagging mom, teenaged daughter, precocious son, nosy neighbors, etc.

For the brief period that the show was the biggest thing in pop-culture, there was "Alf" merchandise everywhere and even an animated prequel-series set on Melmac. Today, the series is probably best remembered for it's notoriously dark, unresolved final episode: A running subplot in the series involved Alf being sought by nefarious government agents, and the fourth season ended on a cliffhanger wherein he was finally exposed and captured moments before he was to make contact with another crew of survivors. The creators believed they were getting one more season, but the show was canceled soon after that and they never got to; meaning that this heavily-kid targeted comedy series essentially ends with the main character and his surrogate family being dragged away by the Men In Black. (The story was "resolved" in the god-awful TV movie "Project A.L.F." a decade later.)