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Released by: Liberation Hall
Released on: June 13th, 2023.
Director: Dick Lowry
Cast: Paul Fusco, Miguel Ferrer, William O'Leary, Jensen Daggett, Liz Coke
Year: 1996
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Project: Alf – Movie Review:
When NBC wouldn’t air the second half of the cliffhanger that finished the fourth season of Alf, ABC wound up completing the story a half decade later with this made for TV movie. The Tanner Family is nowhere to be seen, they’ve gone into the Witness Protection Program and are now living in Iceland and Alf, in his attempt to leave Earth and head back to Melmac, has been captured by the United States military.
When the movie opens, a panel has been setup with various military types and a few random government big wigs to decide what to do with the alien that they’ve captured, and that is eating them out of house and home. A few tests are run (Ed Begley Jr. plays one of the doctors responsible for this) and Alf gets comfortably set up with few amusing side hustles but when Captain Rick Mullican (William O'Leary) and Major Melissa Hill (Jensen Daggett from Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan!) learn that Colonel Gilbert Milfoil (Martin Sheen) has plans to inhumanely do away with Alf – it’s a revenge scheme of sorts, as his mother saw aliens when he was a kid and this somehow led to her death - they kidnap him by knocking him out and stashing him in a laundry bag so that they can sneak him off base and save his life.
Melissa decides that the best course of action will be to bring him to a friend of her late father’s, a man named Dexter Moyers (Miguel Ferrer), a scientist once employed by NASA who was let go when he tried to go public with the fact that aliens exist. After an incident at a hotel where they’re nearly captured (look for My Favorite Martian’s Ray Walston as the hotel owner), they head out into the desert to meet Dexter and his sexy European assistant, Nina (Liz Coke), but they all soon learn that things are not as they seem.
Highlighted by a weirdly surreal scene where Alf is hanging out in a strip club, Project: Alf doesn’t feel right without the Tanner Family there to quibble with the titular creature. While it’s admittedly fairly amusing to see Martin Sheen ham it up and Miguel Ferrer is weirdly watchable in his role, the story is riddled with clichés and even by the typically predictable standards of made for TV comedy movies, it’s a very predictable watch. There are no surprises here at all and the whole thing is just remarkably bland, with a few fleeting exceptions here and there (the aforementioned scene where Alf hits up a nudie bar and some of the testing sequences early in the movie).
To be fair, it’s over fairly quickly and will absolutely give more devout fans of the original TV series a nice nostalgia rush, but those looking for anything more than that may be disappointed.
Project: Alf – Blu-ray Review:
Project: Alf looks pretty decent on this Blu-ray release from Liberation Hall. Presented in 1.78.1 widescreen in AVC encoded 1080p high definition, the transfer provides decent depth, detail and clarity. Colors look really strong here and flesh tones are lifelike and accurate. We get nice black levels and the image is very clean throughout the presentation, showing virtually no print damage at all.
The English language 24-bit LPCM 2.0 Stereo track on the disc is also pretty nice. The levels are properly balanced and there are no issues with any hiss, distortion or sibilance. There’s a bit of depth to the mix and the soundtrack has some decent range to it.
The main extra on the disc is an audio commentary from Paul Fusco moderated by Johnathan Grove. They talk about how the feature movie came about a few years after the TV series went off the air, following up the cliffhanger ending of the show's final series, how the movie started off as a one hour TV special, details on the different cast members that pop up in the movie, some of the humorous names that the characters have in the movie that might not be obvious to some, how the film got an actual theatrical release in Germany where Alf was extremely popular, the Bob Newhart style dry humor that Alf uses when he talks to people, some of the shooting locations that were used in California and quite a bit more.
Aside from that, we get text bios of a few of the people involved with the movie, a trailer for the upcoming Blu-ray release of Robocop: The Complete Series, a still gallery, menus and chapter selection options.
Project: Alf - The Final Word:
Project: Alf isn’t especially good but it has its cult following and members of that cult following will appreciate the fact that it is now available in a genuinely nice looking high definition presentation and with an interesting commentary detailing its history. Recommended for those enjoy the movie and who know what they’re getting into!
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Project: Alf Blu-ray screen caps!
