Mac and Me (1988): The E.T. They Sold You at the Drive-Through

In 1988, two years after E.T. finished conquering the planet, the movie Mac and Me arrived in cinemas to answer a question nobody had asked: what if a beloved alien-meets-boy story were reverse-engineered around product placement? The result is one of the purest commercial artefacts Hollywood has ever produced, a film in which the alien is literally kept alive by Coca-Cola and the emotional centrepiece is a dance number inside a McDonald’s. It flopped, it won Razzies, and it has outlived almost everything that beat it at the box office that summer. Funny how that works.

The Product Is the Plot

MAC, a Mysterious Alien Creature, follows a family to suburban California after being vacuumed aboard a NASA probe. He is a whistling, rubber-faced being whose species survives by drinking cola drawn from rocks on their home planet, which means the plot must keep feeding him Coke the way other films feed their aliens Reese’s Pieces. The film’s big set piece is a birthday party at a McDonald’s, complete with a choreographed dance routine, a football team, and an appearance by Ronald McDonald as himself. Ronald received a credit. Skittles also feature so prominently they practically have an arc. Director Stewart Raffill has been refreshingly honest in interviews that the funding shaped the film, which explains everything and forgives most of it.

The Cliff

The film’s young hero, Eric, uses a wheelchair, and in an early scene a runaway chase sends him rolling off a cliff into a lake. The stunt is shot so abruptly, from such a wide angle, that it plays like an outtake from a very different movie. Decades later Paul Rudd began bringing the clip to every appearance on Conan O’Brien’s shows, presenting it in place of whatever film he was supposed to promote, and he kept the bit running for over 15 years without missing. One scene from a forgotten 1988 flop became one of the longest-running jokes on American television. MAC saves the boy, in case you were worried. The alien resurrects him with vigorous whistling.

What It All Cost

Mac and Me reportedly cost around $13 million and recovered roughly half of it. Plans for a sequel, boldly teased in the final frame with the on-screen promise “We’ll be back,” evaporated. At the 1989 Golden Raspberry Awards it collected worst director and worst new star, the latter for Ronald McDonald, a decision we consider the Razzies’ finest hour. The whole family of aliens is eventually revived in a supermarket with Coca-Cola, granted U.S. citizenship in a closing ceremony, and never seen again.

Field Notes for the Curious

Worst Movies Ever Made performed the full autopsy on this one in 2014 and their review pairs nicely with a large fries. The film streams cheaply on the usual rental platforms for about $4, and the disc hovers around $10. Serve it with the beverage of your choice. You know the one. The film certainly does, and it will remind you roughly every nine minutes, with a sincerity that borders on hypnosis. We rate it five golden arches out of a possible spoon.