SOURCE: Musto, Michael. “Spacing Out.” Saturday Review 11, no. 1 (January–February 1985): 80–81.

In the following review, Musto criticizes Starman as boring, unoriginal, and unrealistic, but comments that the strength of the film is the element of humanity expressed in the love story.

A spaceship rockets through the galaxies and the first thing you think is, “That isn't really a spaceship, that's a five-foot model they would like you to think is a spaceship.” The next thought: You are in for two hours of icy-cold technology—laser guns, space-to-earth communications and computer gibberish—dressing up a script that is not even clever enough to encourage willing suspension of disbelief. You are in for a major yawn.

Fighting those expectations is one of the secret missions of every science fiction film. Unless it can combine striking imagination with a basic ring of truth, it inevitably remains earthbound.

Director John Carpenter's Starman avoids...