Una (12) is an ordinary girl living with her two siblings, Alex and Sven, and her mother and grandfather in a desolate house. One night, a UFO takes away her grandfather, while her mother becomes inexplicably ill and must go to the hospital. Una discovers grandpa's little robot, Dodo, who reveals to the truth to her: he is from a far away planet, where aliens transformed into beings made just out of energy, but sent expeditions to Earth to see how people find happiness. However, several decades ago, the spaceship accidentally caused an explosion of the house, so the alien merged with grandpa, in order to save him from his wounds, and acted as a battery for the wounded mother. Now that grandpa has been taken away, mother is ill because her battery is too far away to sustain her. Una and Dodo take on a trip to find grandpa. They find him in an abandoned castle. Grandpa-alien dies in order to give his energy to mother, who survives. The aliens also find the solution to happiness: being friends.
A rare example of a feature length science-fiction film in Croatian cinema, this modern retelling and restructuring of "E.T." is a sympathetic little film that comes as a refreshing contribution to the country's movie market. "My Grandpa Is an Alien" is still rather standard and old-fashioned, nonetheless: it lacks that more elevated humor expected from modern movies, where jokes work both for kids and for the more demanding grown ups. A consequence of that is mostly felt on the lacking personality of the main protagonist: Una is a rather underwhelming character, a one who only has time to shine sporadically, which is a pity, since she is played by Lana Hranjec, who is a much better and more charming actress than the movie lets her to be. A rare moment where Una shines is the one where the boat gets stuck on a top of a small waterfall, with her and the robot Dodo in it, but Una just loses her patience, stands out of the boat (!) and steps into the water, until she pushes the boat down the stream again. The story needed more of these kind of moments, since several sequences that had potential for more, such as Una's confrontation with bullying girls in school, ended up rather underdeveloped. Among the plus points are great visual effects, surprisingly up to the task for a country outside Hollywood, as well as an interesting little subplot in which the aliens are described as beings who transitioned into a state made out of pure energy, reminiscent of Clarke's idea from his novel "2001: A Space Odyssey". "My Grandpa Is an Alien" is a neat little film that somehow enabled Croatian cinema to expand its horizons, shyly taping into some more unusual and unique genres outside of the usual safe drama genre prevalent in the country.
Grade:++
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