Stewart Raffill’s animal adventures and eccentric genre films suggest a director willing to work with whatever is available. We respect that resourcefulness, but Mac and Me shows how badly his storytelling can neglect the people it needs us to like.
Fi1m perspective
In Mac and Me (1988), a boy’s friendship with an alien keeps having to compete with McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. We found it dispiriting because the brands get the attention that should have gone to making the pair interesting company. Raffill is trying to offer children wonder, mischief and reassurance, all of which are worth attempting. It is a poor family film, though not one without a little warmth.
His earlier work gives us a better reason to take that ambition seriously. Raffill came to directing through animal training and stunt work, and animals and wilderness recur in his films. The Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1975) established him in family adventure, where his skill with animal sequences had a clear use. By The Ice Pirates (1984) and The Philadelphia Experiment (1984), he had moved into science fiction, with comedy part of the former’s business. His habit of building scripts around available elements helps explain a career that can accommodate both wilderness adventures and odd genre mixtures.
That practical ingenuity deserves some credit, but it does not excuse the writing of Mac and Me. Raffill and co-writer Steve Feke use the familiar story of a child befriending an alien, then show remarkably little curiosity about the friendship. The resemblance to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial need not have sunk it; familiar stories work when we enjoy spending time with the characters. Jade Calegory gives us a reason to stay, but the screenplay rarely gives Eric and Mac enough to sustain that interest. Treating a wheelchair-using child with respect matters, and the film still owes him a better story.
The later Tammy and the T-Rex (1994) acquired a cult following, as did The Ice Pirates. Raffill’s genre films often put family-friendly elements beside adult humour or darker material, so conventional family entertainment is not always what he is offering. There is room for that sort of awkwardness, and we would not dismiss the rest of his work on the evidence of one poor film. But approach the cult titles for their eccentricities; do not choose Mac and Me in the hope of a satisfying family evening.
Biography
Stewart Raffill is a British-born American film director and screenwriter. Born on 27 January 1942 in England, he grew up in the Midlands before moving to the United States at age 18. He began his career in the film industry as an animal supervisor and trainer before directing his first feature, The Tender Warrior (1971).
Raffill is known for family adventure films in the 1970s such as The Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1975) and Across the Great Divide (1976). In the 1980s he directed science fiction and other genre films including The Ice Pirates (1984), The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) and Mac and Me (1988), the last of which he also wrote. Later credits include Mannequin Two: On the Move (1991), for which he wrote the original story of Passenger 57 (1992), and Tammy and the T-Rex (1994). He has also directed episodes of television series and the TV movie Croc (2007).
