Starman
Directed by John Carpenter7.083%70%6.9
An alien takes the form of a young Wisconsin widow's husband and makes her drive him to his departure point in Arizona. Distrustful government agents, along with a more ambivalent scientist, give pursuit in hopes of intercepting them.
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Starman Ratings & Reviews
- ZokkiieMarch 2, 2026I really didn’t think Starman was going to be my thing. I expected something slow, dated, maybe even a little dull. Instead, it completely pulled me in. Jeff Bridges gives such a controlled, offbeat performance, but it’s Karen Allen who gives the movie its heart. She carries so much of the emotional weight, and her performance feels raw and believable without ever being overdramatic. You can feel every stage of what she’s going through. It’s a quiet film, very character-focused, and that’s what makes it work. The pacing is deliberate, but it never dragged for me. By the end, I was surprised by how moved I felt. Definitely not what I expected — in the best way.
- Vincent ReggianniniJuly 11, 2025Quite possibly Carpenter’s best mainstream movie, with fantastic performances by Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith and Richard Jaeckel. Karen Allen is vulnerable, emotional and adorable in the role of Jenny Hayden - a grieving widower of her soul mate, Scott Hayden who has been cloned by an alien explorer in an attempt to get back to his home planet. Jeff Bridges is the titular Starman, but he is not a mindless, souless robot - he is an alien explorer who was sent as an emissary to humanity, after having been “invited” by the Voyager One greeting. His trip is cut short when his craft is attacked by a paranoid human race and he crashes into a remote Wisconsin woods. Bridges is endlessly fascinating as an alien creature learning to exist in a corporeal body, stumbling first with basic motion, then speech and eventually interacting with Earth‘s dominant species, and ultimately learning what is to care for someone more than he cares about himself. Charles Martin Smith, whom most of you will instantly recognize is a wide-eyed scientist who is all too aware of what he is witnessing when he meets the representative of an alien race at least 100,000 years more advanced than us. He is simultaneously in awe of this being, and embarrassed by his own species’s response to his visit. Richard Jaeckel Is a government representative treating this alien as an invader, and possibly something to study and dissect. The film has Carpenter’s normal visual splendor and a disarmingly sentimental look at the budding relationship between Karen Allen and Jeff Bridges. It is by far his most “human” film, and it comes after decades of him being behind some of the most memorable, if not financially successful, sci-fi classics like “Escape From New York”, “Big Trouble in Little China”, “The Fog” and what many consider to be THE best Science Fiction\Horror movie of all time - “John Carpenter’s - The Thing”. This movie represents redemption for Carpenter, always a Hollywood outsider and always a combative, and counter-culture force in the movie scene. Carpenter has a bitter edge to him, long holding a grudge for the ”failure” of “The Thing” to be a financial success, but seemingly unaware or uninterested with the facts that his films have all left an indelible mark in all our hearts. Even if you are not a Carpenter fan I highly recommend seeing this movie. It may not represent the core of Carpenter’s legacy, but it’s an intense and romantic adventure with some truly brilliant performances by its main cast. “I think I am becoming a planet Earth person. You are all so alive, and different. I will miss the cooks. And the singing and the dancing…and the eating… …and the “other things”.
Starman Trivia
Starman was released on December 14, 1984.
Starman was directed by John Carpenter.
Starman has a runtime of 1h 55m.
Starman was produced by Larry Franco.
An alien takes the form of a young Wisconsin widow's husband and makes her drive him to his departure point in Arizona. Distrustful government agents, along with a more ambivalent scientist, give pursuit in hopes of intercepting them.
The key characters in Starman are Starman / Scott Hayden (Jeff Bridges), Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen), Mark Shermin (Charles Martin Smith).
Starman is rated PG.
Starman is a Science Fiction, Romance, Drama film.
Starman has an audience rating of 7 out of 10.
Starman had a budget of $22M.
Starman has made $28.7M at the box office.