‘Earth to Echo’ has its charm — but just barely

When it’s distilled to its essence, “Earth to Echo” — easily falling into the realm of the “Super 8” and “Stand by Me” variety — is a supernatural-tinged coming-of-age story. (No, it’s not “E.T.,” though you wouldn’t be ridiculed for thinking so.)

The story of our young heroes will entertain. The plot involving an alien looking suspiciously like WALL-E? Eh …

Which is a shame, because “Earth to Echo,” directed by Dave Green in his debut feature, has a solid premise in coming to terms with the realities and responsibilities of growing up. (It’s kind of hard to botch a theme so ubiquitous and overtly appealing to today’s audience.) However, in deciding to attach the leads and the crux of emotional value to a small robot-esque alien — no matter how awesome it is — rather than to the development of said humans, “Earth to Echo” just doesn’t quite nail that launching.

The problem with this center of focus stems from the simple fact that a tale of growing up as a teenager in today’s world doesn’t necessarily need some type of supernatural element to make it succeed. Don’t teenagers already have enough to deal with? In fact, our leads — Tuck (Brian “Astro” Bradley), Munch (Reese C. Hartwig) and Alex (Teo Halm) — already are contending with the impending leveling of their Nevada neighborhood for a new highway. So, instead of taking their last night together and making it plausibly worthwhile, they’re sent on a journey to discover the source of a series of bizarre messages interfering with their cellphones. In the dead of night, they discover our adorable baby alien.

All the while, the film is being played out on recording devices such as cellphones and camcorders, lost footage-style. And though you wouldn’t be the only one to say this method of storytelling may be wearing out its welcome (the last quality time probably being “Chronicle”), it works surprisingly well here. Perhaps it’s because this is how most of us view life these days — digitally, on back-lit monitors and handheld devices. Regardless, the method positively adds to the drama.

When we start hearing the script come to life, though, is when we realize where the movie falls short. The script focuses heavily on the alien rather than the watchable friendship between our leads, which is odd, considering how choppy and surprisingly uninterested in answering any of the myriad questions our little alien friend, cutely named Echo, presents.

The film does take some clever jabs at those vices such as popularity and money, though most are just surface lobs. The short run time leaves little space for characters or their antics to be developed in any real sense. Though this much should be said: Echo’s penchant for rearranging metal objects leads to some beautiful visuals, and it’s oddly sweet to watch our little alien be so cute and awesome at the same time.

In the end, “Earth to Echo” tries it hardest to emulate those popular coming-of-age classics that make us nostalgic for summers of our youth. But sadly, it just doesn’t quite reach those heights. What we needed was “Super 8” with an adorable alien. What we got was “X-Files” with some human sidekicks.

Two supernatural stars out of five.

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Munch (Reese Hartwig) and Echo are shown in a scene from from “Earth to Echo.” (Photo credit: Relativity Media)