Allen Review: Daley Pearson's Warm Sci-Fi Reunion Comedy

Petey (T.J. Power) was a boy when an alien dropped into his life, and a chunk of him has been frozen in that moment ever since. His childhood friend Carly (Charlotte Nicdao) has grown up, moved on, and built a life; Petey has built a shrine of routines around a memory. Then his old friend returns - and the reason is complicated, and not at all what Petey spent twenty years rehearsing in his head. What follows is part road trip, part family reconciliation, and part gentle interrogation of what closure actually means.

The screenplay keeps the extraterrestrial machinery in the background and the human mess in the foreground. That's a deliberate trade: the "why" of the return lands less as a twist than as a quiet punchline about how we mythologize the past. Elijah Tamati's Young Petey and Caitlin Niemotko's Young Carly carry the flashback thread with real chemistry, giving the adult reunion genuine weight.

Pearson directs with a light touch and an obvious affection for scrappy, character-first genre comedy. The film is 105 minutes and rarely feels it; scenes breathe, jokes land sideways rather than with a drumbeat, and the visual effects are modest in a way that suits the story's smallness. This is a movie about a man and a memory, not a man and a spaceship, and Pearson never forgets it.

Power is the engine. His Petey could have been a sad sack caricature, but he plays the obsession as a kind of stubborn loyalty, which makes him easy to root for and occasionally frustrating in the right ways. Nicdao is the film's steadying hand - dry, grounded, and quietly wounded - and their back-and-forth carries most of the emotional load. Josh Helman, Emily Barclay, Benedict Hardie, and Edward A O'Sullivan round out the ensemble with enough texture that even small roles feel lived-in.

Where it stumbles is in the middle stretch, when the road-trip structure starts to feel like a series of pleasant detours rather than momentum. A few comedic beats stretch past their welcome, and the family subplot with Sarah (Barclay) resolves a touch too neatly for the knot it ties. The "complicated and unexpected" reason behind the return is more charming in concept than in execution; the film is so committed to warmth that it softens some edges that might have cut deeper.

Still, the tonal control is impressive. Allen moves between slapstick and melancholy without whiplash, and it earns its final scenes honestly. In an era of bloated franchise spectacle, a mid-budget Hollywood sci-fi comedy that wants you to feel something about a guy and his alien is a small pleasure worth noting. The 7.583/10 TMDb rating feels about right - generous, but not undeserved.

Pros

• T.J. Power and Charlotte Nicdao ground the absurdity in real, messy affection
• Pearson's direction balances goofy comedy with genuine melancholy
• Modest, character-first scale that keeps the story intimate
• Strong young cast in the flashback thread
• A finale that earns its warmth without reaching for false uplift

Cons

• Mid-section pacing sags into episodic detours
• The central "why" lands softer than its buildup promises
• Sarah's family subplot wraps too tidily
• Some comedic beats overstay their welcome

Allen is that rare reunion movie that understands the reunion is the point, not the alien. It doesn't reinvent the genre, and it occasionally mistakes gentleness for depth - but its big, funny, aching heart beats in the right place. For families, for the nostalgic, for anyone who has ever refused to let a good memory go, this is a 105-minute trip worth taking. Stream it with someone who never quite moved on from something, either.