Movie Review: Aliens in the Attic

By Adam Markovitz (Entertainment Weekly)

B- Parents, start your minivans: Aliens in the Attic is a pointless but ultimately harmless family adventure that doesn't mentally assault the 12-and-over set. (Extra points for being 100 percent fart-joke-free). A band of scrappy space gremlins face off against a group of teen and tween cousins (including High School Musical's Ashley Tisdale) in a turf war over a Midwestern summer rental home. The E.T.s are after some kind of sci-fi device buried underneath the basement; the kids just want to make sure their clueless folks don't get tagged by the aliens' mind-control gizmos. The ensuing war of the worlds is waged with weapons as fearsome as a bubble blower, a skateboard, and a sort of anti-gravity grenade that, frankly, looks like a lot of fun. B-

Ashley Tisdale's Guilty Pleasure

By Marian Tuin (The Examiner)

Best known for her roles in both Disney's High School Musicals and on the show The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, Ashley Tisdale attempted to bridge the "Tween" gap into maturity with the release of her sophomore album, Guilty Pleasure on Tuesday. And though the Actress/Pop Media Princess may have reached her 24th birthday and more mature roles in her acting career, her music is still a little too "Teeny Bop" to have fully matured into the Adult Pop Genre.

The first single, "It's Alright, It's OK" which was released this spring in advance of the album is catchy enough to get stuck in your head after hearing it once but that isn't necessarily a good thing. She said in pre-release interviews that this album was set on an edgier rock vibe. Not so much, unless you consider cotton candy harder to chew on than bubble gum. Her musical sound and lyric lack substance for a mature audience. Take the song "Hot Mess" for instance with lyrics that say, "You wake up and you make up," going on to explain in the chorus, "I'm such a hot mess with you". Or the song "Hair" in which the intro beat seems a cheep imitation of Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" anthem. And the lyrics include phrases like, "You rock my party, make me wanna sweat...I like what you do to my hair, tousle it, tease it, run your fingers through it...C'mon, mess it up, mess it up."

It seems the aim of the album was to mimic every young female successor in the pop genre, perhaps aiming for the likes of Kelly Clarkson meets Christiana Aguilera and the early days of Britney Spears. But the music is simply not hard hitting enough nor is it convincing. There is no doubt the Teen Pop audience and Tisdale's following will find this album relevant and relatable but for the adult audience it is a long shot from bridging that afore mentioned "Tween" gap. If this sophomore attempt does hit a sweet spot anywhere, it's in the very appropriately given title, Guilty Pleasure.

You can also watch for Ashley Tisdale to appear in the 20th Century Fox film, Aliens in the Attic in theaters everywhere tomorrow (July 31, 2009).