While a family is on summer vacation, they discover aliens are trying to invade the Earth. Carter Jenkins plays the lead character Tom Pearson who is part of the Pearson family that goes to a remote house by a lake for summer vacation. When Tom is up on the roof, with his sister's boyfriend Ricky Dillman (played by Robert Hoffman) repairing the satellite dish for his Grandma Nana(played by Doris Roberts), aliens arrive on the roof and attack them. They are small, green, and ugly. The aliens fire a remote mind control device into the back of their necks but it only works on Ricky, not Tom, because Ricky is an adult. The device allows one to control the person using a controller that is similar to the kind used for video games. Tom retreats to go get help. He dials 911, speaks to the Sheriff explaining aliens are attacking, but the phone line is cut before he can explain more. He gets the other family members to help him fight the aliens, which include his cousins Jake (played by Austin Butler), and identical twins Art (played by Henri Young) and Lee (played by Regan Young). Ricky falls off the roof but survives the fall.
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The kids are able to steal the control device that operates Ricky and make Ricky walk around acting very strangely in front of his girlfriend Bethany (played by Ashley Tisdale) who is Tom's sister. They also make Ricky tell their parents they must go to the rental office in an emergency to get them out of the house while they fight off the aliens. The kids know if they cannot prevent the aliens from using the mind control device on their parents, they will not be able to stop the invasion.
Tom's little sister, Hannah (played by Ashley Boettcher) befriends the smallest alien Sparks (with the voice of Josh Peck) who is not violent like the other aliens. The three other aliens Tazer (with the voice of Thomas Haden Church), Skip (with the voice of J.K. Simmons), and Razor (with the voice of Kari Wahlgren) launch an attack on the children to escape the attic. Their goal is to get to the basement where a device they need has been buried. The aliens try the heating ducts to go to the basement. Tom turns up the heat even though it is in July, then they throw fireworks into the ducts.
Because Ricky is acting so strange, Bethany and Ricky break up.
The aliens use the mind control on Grandma Nana. They aliens regain control over Ricky but the kids gain control of Nana. Nana and Ricky have a huge fight flying through the air like martial arts warriors. The aliens succeed in getting the device they need.
They aliens set up the device in the back yard. The device makes them grow into giants. The alien Skip grows 30 feet in a matter of moments. He signals to the rest of the invading aliens to come towards Earth. Tom is able to use the mind control device on Skip to subdue him and reverse his size. They destroy the enlarging machine. Sparks signals to the approaching aliens that they should call off the invasion since the device is destroyed. The aliens are defeated. They return home, except for Skip who is carried off by a bird. Tom and Bethany use the mind control device on Ricky to embarrass him in front of his new girlfriend.
Best part of story, including ending:
I like the mind control device because it provides for much of the comedy in this movie.
Best scene in story:
I like it when the male and female alien see a movie on TV where Zoro sword fights with a woman, then ends up kissing her. It is funny because of the aliens' disgusted reaction to the kiss.
Opinion about the main character:
Tom is a good leader but I did not think the creation of a potato firing weapon was all that useful against the aliens, even though it is funny.
While on vacation, some kids discover aliens in their attic, plotting an invasion of Earth. Tom is a teenager having a hard time in life. He loves computers and technology, but his other grades are struggling. His older sister, Bethany, spends all her time with her jerk boyfriend Ricky. Worst of all, his parents decide that the family needs to spend some time away from the city, so they go to some vacation house far from home and his friends, in hopes that family bonding will commence. However, when aliens knock over the family's TV satellite, and Tom witnesses them controlling Ricky's body, he learns that they are in the midst of an invasion. Since the mind control devices the aliens employ don't work on kids, Tom and the other children in the house prepare themselves to fight back. The aliens try to attack the children using Ricky as a puppet, but they manage to get a hold of the remote control used to control Ricky and force him to join their side of the battle. Meanwhile, one of the aliens, Sparks, reveals himself to Tom's little sister Hannah. Sparks doesn't want to fight anybody, all he wants to do is go home, so he goes along with what the other mean aliens command him to do. When Sparks tells Tom and the gang that the other aliens now have a device at their disposal which will cause them to grow to gigantic sizes, and they discover the aliens have kidnapped their cousin, it's up to Tom to lead the charge into combat, save his cousin, destroy their device, and save the world.
Best part of story, including ending:
Even for a kid's movie, this film is too simplistic and undercooked. None of the characters stand out, and the action is all lame.
Best scene in story:
In one scene, the aliens control their elderly grandmother while the kids control Ricky, and they engage Ricky and the grandma in kung fu combat.
Opinion about the main character:
Tom isn't given much personality, except that he's kind of a generic nerdy misfit type. Not really much to grab onto in him or any of the other human characters.
