In 1977, the Voyager 2 travels to the outer space with messages of peace and greetings from Earth. A small alien spacecraft comes to Earth to make contact with Earthlings but the military airplanes shoot it down. The spacecraft crashes in Chequamegon Bay, Wisconsin and the alien wanders in a form of energy to the house of the young widow Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen),where he uses the DNA from a hair of her husband Scott (Jeff Bridges) to take his human form. The Starman contacts his mother ship and he needs to be in a crater Arizona in a couple of days to return to his star; otherwise he will be left behind and will die.

The Starman forces Jenny to take him to Arizona and she is hostile with him in the beginning. However, she learns that he is a peaceful being and she chooses to help him. But the army is chasing them and the despicable NSA chief George Fox (Richard Jaeckel) wants to hunt him down while the SETI scientist Mark Shermin (Charles Martin Smith) wants to help The Starman since he is sure that he has come to visit Earth peacefully.

"Starman" is still a wonderful sci-fi after thirty years. Nominated to the Oscar and to the Golden Globe, Jeff Bridges has magnificent performance and chemistry with Karen Allen. John Carpenter succeeds once again and makes a movie with a beautiful story, with drama, romance, action and humor. I saw this movie many times in the past on VHS but today I saw it on Blu-Ray. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Starman - O Homem das Estrelas" ("Starman - The Man from the Stars")

Note: On 25 Aug 2020, I saw this film again.

Starman is based on the premise that when we made an invitation in the journey into deep space of Voyager II someone out there would take us up on it. Apparently someone has and we were far from ready for it.

A shape shifting alien is down for a look/see and when he arrives he takes the image of Karen Allen's late husband who looks a whole lot like Jeff Bridges.

Though Bridges got a Best Actor nomination in my opinion the best performance in the film is from Karen Allen. Throughout the film she is registering all kinds of feelings and emotions multiple emotions at the same time like any of us would facing her situation. Imagine an alien creature taking the form of your significant other who has passed on?

Obviously Voyager II's invitation should have been destination specific like the United Nations in New York or since the USA did build and launch the probe, Washington, DC. But instead it lands in rural Wisconsin and he's got to make a rendezvous for a pickup in Arizona, the heart of red state America where folks are having trouble dealing with all kinds of humans different from them.

Bridges in the title role is a wonderful combination of genius and ingenuous. He's centuries beyond humans in his evolutionary development but a mere child in dealing with humans other than Karen Allen. But he's a quick learner and note he never harms a living soul.

There's another conflict going on, one between scientist Charles Martin Smith who'd like to study and learn from Bridges and Richard Jaeckel the military man who wants to capture him and become light years technologically advanced. We are still in a Cold War. One shudders to think had he landed in the Soviet Union or in China. Probably no better than here and most assuredly worse.

Bridges certainly takes on all the physiological aspects of male humankind and after a night of passion on a train boxcar with Allen all kinds of theological questions are raised since he most assuredly tells Allen she's pregnant from the encounter and their kid will grow up to be a great teacher.

Unusual for a science fiction film Star Man does not depend on awesome special effects, they are there but not the main focus of the story. No accident that the film didn't receive any Oscar recognition in the technical categories. Just a nomination for Bridges and one that should have happened for Karen Allen. Both of them put over a fine and startling story.

Given director John Carpenter's predilection for horror - I'm thinking HALLOWEEN and THE THING, of course - you wouldn't imagine him to be best suited to the job of directing STARMAN, a cross-country romance with a science fiction twist. And yet he does a blinding job, and STARMAN proves to be a fine little movie; in parts poignant, touching and altogether human.

Although this film came out in the wake of E.T., I find it superior to the overly-sentimental Spielberg movie. The storyline is subtle and the developing central relationship is slow paced, taking time to get to know the protagonists and present them in a realistic light. The love story between Allen and Bridges is low key throughout, and even the love scenes are handled sensitively.

Allen has always seemed to me to be a completely natural actress, free from artifice; she has a rare ability to inhabit her roles which makes you wonder why she didn't become a bigger name. Opposite her in an Oscar-nominated performance stands Jeff Bridges, playing it kooky and mannered as the alien-in-a-man's-body; there's something oddly moving about his role in this film and he soon had me completely engaged in his character.

Yes, I'll admit that I shed a tear or two at the moving climax, even though I'm a totally non-romantic person when it comes to films and you can usually find me watching gory horror flicks instead. Saying that, watch out for the utterly eerie scene at the opening when a baby transforms into a man. This scene scared the hell out of me when I saw it as a kid, and even today the icky sound and physical effects bring to mind a certain ice-bound Carpenter classic!