Earth To Echo

In this summer family adventure movie, Tuck, Munch and Alex are a trio of inseparable friends whose lives are about to change. Their neighborhood is being destroyed by a highway construction project that is forcing their families to move away. But just two days before they must part ways, the boys begin receiving a strange series of signals on their phones.  Convinced something bigger is going on, they team up with another school friend, Emma, and set out to look for the source of their phone signals. What they discover is something beyond their wildest imaginations: a small alien who has become stranded on Earth. In need of their help, the four friends come together to protect the alien and help him find his way home. This journey, full of wonder and adventure, is their story, and their secret.

This movie is exactly what is wrong with Hollywood today.  You have movies like Transformers 4 which cost like 200 million dollars to make, are 3 hours long and just crammed with over the top nonsense, crazy special effects and big name actors.  They are a dime a dozen.  We all flock to see them and they are all out of our minds two minutes after we walk out of the theater.  Then there is a movie like Earth To Echo that will phase out of theaters in the blink of an eye without most people even knowing what it was.  It had to cost pretty much nothing to make comparably.  It has pretty much no known actors whatsoever and is really just four random kids.  It's barely 90 minutes long.  It's that single camera filming with minimal amounts of effects.  Yet - this movie has the whole crowd clapping at the end of it.  It has made you completely fall in love with this group of kids and Echo over the course of 90 minutes.  You are laughing your ass off at parts and getting choked up at others.  You catch yourself completely rooting for these kids and Echo as the movie plays out in E.T. like fashion.  I had a hunch that I was going to like this movie but I ended up absolutely loving it.  This is one of those special connection type movies and I loved how incredibly simple the movie was.

I absolutely recommend people checking this out.  It was a fun, touching and very entertaining watch.  This will probably be the shocking movie to show up on my Top 10 of the year when 2014 comes to a close.