Extra Cinema: Earth to Echo (PG)

Undated Film Still Handout from Earth To Echo. Pictured: Teo Halm, Reese Hartwig and Astro. See PA Feature FILM Film Reviews. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Entertainment One. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Film Reviews.

Director: Dave Green

In 1982, ET phoned home and now another stranded extra-terrestrial requires assistance from pint-sized heroes to safely return to the stars in Dave Green’s fantastical family-oriented adventure.

Green’s special effects-laden picture treads a familiar path through fresh eyes by the found footage format a la Paranormal Activity.

Characters address an omnipresent video camera, verbalising their excitement and fear as a night-time bicycle ride into the desert becomes a rescue mission of galactic proportions.

In fragmented footage, we meet Tuck and best friends Alex (Teo Halm) and Reginald aka Munch (Reese Hartwig) after they learn that a highway construction project is going to tear apart their community of Clark County, Nevada.

On their last night together, the boys follow strange signals on their mobile phones into the desert.

They uncover a friendly robot, who has become stranded on Earth, and the boys pledge to help their otherworldly friend locate the missing parts of his spaceship so he can return home.

Plucky classmate Emma (Ella Wahlestedt) joins the trio as they evade government officials led by Dr Lawrence Masden (Jason Gray-Stanford), who are also hunting Echo.

Earth To Echo is a state-of-the-art ode to ET and its imitators that ups the technical ante for a new generation.