Mac and Me
While it would be fair to complain that the recent #1 film in the US, Disturbia, is a movie built on shameless product placement (check out that opening Coca-Cola moment in the first scene!), and doesn’t have to make a dime to be profitable, the producers still have something to strive for. While Adam Sandler spent his early career in 90 minute ads for Subway (Happy Gilmore) and Jean-Claude Van Damme paraded around in Double Team, where Coca-Cola was actually written in as a plot point and twice a method of escape, no film has managed to be as whoringly audacious as Mac and Me, where the products are not just saviors of the characters (such as Coke bringing aliens back to life) but actually have them named after the product.
I’m sure the producers were not trying to be as cynical as it seemed at the time, they believed in making a genuine children’s film, modeled after E.T., and that placed the child characters in situations that would genuinely reflect how real children would behave. Sure, some children go to McDonald’s. I’m sure they even occasionally come upon enthusiastic representatives of said restaurant. It is also likely that the aliens these children have been hiding might engage in some entertainment and engagement of their own, such as dancing with other employees of this restaurant.
See? It's just children having a good time. Nothing unusual at all.
The film is also willing to explore deeper and more disturbing issues, and I don't just refer to accepting people who look different.
What I'm really saying is that sometimes children have traumatizing situations with adults, and they don't know how to handle it, or that what they are doing is wrong.
Occasionally, this leads to the child having problems responding and reacting in a "normal" fashion.
The producers had plenty of moxie in other ways, such as using a lead actor who is handicapped and in a wheelchair. Most films would treat him with kid gloves but they chose to show what happens when such a child finds himself in peril, when he's betrayed by what he relies on and loses control.
And while aliens can be seen as cute and cuddly, especially to fatherless children with no moral guidance and no knowledge of how to lead a normal life which is how they got paralyzed in the first place*, sometimes they are also frightening.
Besides, if we can't take advantage of an audience's sympathy by using a paraplegic to sell products, then who can we trust?
*Clearly, this was the hidden message all along.
