I appreciate John Carpenter. I appreciate what he tried to do here, matching his visionary sci-fi and creature brain with a heart-felt story about a grieving widow Jenny (Karen Allen) finding love and hope again. But there is one thing that should (and was) heralded in this film - and that’s Jeff Bridges as the titular Starman.
Jeff has to play an alien who comes to Earth, takes the form of Jenny’s ex-husband, and pass off as a human while also learning about their world. Every little quirk he has, from speech to his movements, are fairly confounding. The role of being a human who doesn’t know what it’s like to be human so they’re trying to figure it out is something that many actors fail pretty easily at. It is terribly hard to believably come by and properly execute1. Bridges’ little ticks of being unsure how to properly move about in this alien (to him) body are very bird-like, in that nothing is smooth and every reaction and movement is very quick and jerky. His inability to articulate words in a fluid way are annoying yet weirdly believable. There is something you feel when you watch Bridges absorb the world around him that is innocent and lovable. Just an all-time great performance from him.
The best modern example is probably Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina or a same but different role for Scarlett Johansson in Her)