*batteries not included

Apartment block tenants seek the aid of alien mechanical life-forms to save their building from demolition.

• Director:Matthew Robbins
• Genre:Comedy / Family / Fantasy / Sci-Fi
• Runtime:104 minutes

Cast

Hume Cronyn : Frank Riley, Owner Riley’s Cafe
Jessica Tandy : Faye Riley
Frank McRae : Harry Noble
Elizabeth Pe?a : Marisa Esteval
Michael Carmine : Carlos

The film is set in contemporary New York City. Frank and Faye Riley, an elderly couple who run an apartment building and restaurant in the run-down East Village neighborhood, come under threat by a nearby property development. The development manager, Mr. Lacey, sends a hoodlum named Carlos and his gang to bribe the couple and their tenants to move out. When the Rileys refuse to move, Carlos vandalizes the cafe.

Things look bleak until the appearance of a pair of living machines (later titled “The Fix-Its” by Faye) descend into the apartment of the Rileys one evening, restoring the cafe. The two extraterrestrial “Fix-Its” then take up residence in the apartment building and give birth to three baby “Fix-Its”. Later, the mechanical family recruit countless other “Fix-Its” for repairs after the apartment building is scarred by arson.

The machines sometimes appear to display emotional reactions. Though their origins remain a mystery, they share some features of von Neumann probes; they are apparently independent of external control, and they have the ability to assimilate scrap metal from various sources to replicate and repair themselves. Early in the movie, Frank insists they are spaceships “from a very small planet…very small.” However, in one scene, where Mason examines a “Fix-It” with a magnifying glass, he sees what appear to be micromachines flying through or scuttling across it, implying that there are living beings inside it. Read more

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