We start the movie seeing a wet and exasperated Mike fumbling around a comically large satellite dish in front of his house. He’s got a leather bowtie on and you have to wonder what in the steampunk is going on there, but before anyone can answer that we are presented with even more questions. This teenage boy has clearly experienced the worst night of his life (so far) and is trying to send a transmission to outer space claiming that he’s a long lost alien and doesn’t belong on Earth, and if his space mom could come pick him up. Lightning hits the satellite dish followed by an explosion. Did it work? There’s no way that it could. Unless…
Then, knowing I’m already confused two minutes into the movie, we are graced with a “two weeks prior” title card. We see the same Mike Pillsbury from the opening scene but he is not wearing formal wear and the satellite dish (which is so absurdly large even for the 90s) is intact. This is where we establish the backstory for the rest of this adventure.
Mike Pillsbury is a teenage boy who is a little strange—out of this world, even? He loves to do computer stuff, which means that he’s a weirdo who only has one friend and that friend’s little brother, whom he tells wild stories about an alien species called the Hanzels. He’s not good at football, even though his dad insists he keeps playing on the team. He is so bad that he scores for the other team and is knocked out so hard that he hallucinates beings in other galaxies. Nobody cares that this twig of a boy can’t even walk after being pummeled into the muddy ground. To be fair, they didn’t know about CTE yet, that’s 1999, baby!
There’s another reason other than Mr. Pillsbury that keeps Mike on the field: Katelyn Sandman, a cheerleader who we have to assume is the hottest girl in school. Luckily for him, she ends up sitting next to him in their computer science class the next day. Unfortunately for him, his bully, Scott Schriebner, is also in this class. Scott is hot, strong, and good at football. He’s also not dumb, which we don’t typically see with a 90’s jock nemesis character. Scott is also super good at computers, just like Mike, except when Mike is good at computer it’s icky and weird but when Scott does it, it just adds to his charm. This is why we’re in a male loneliness epidemic!
Coming from someone who lived the past but is also from the future, the way that computers in high schools are used in older movies is so technologically advanced that we can’t even do some of this shit, even though we live in a future where an A.I. actually passed the Turing test. Both Matt and Scott participate in a game of technological warfare where they install floppy discs into their own computers and then an image pops up on someone else’s computer. We have never in the history of technology been able to accomplish this (still reeling at the instant messaging function in Pretty in Pink). Mike starts this cyberbullying campaign by sending a fake booty call from the principal to their teacher, who just leaves. Then he goes for the kill shot by sending a .gif to everyone’s computer of a clip art pig with Scott’s face on it. This is peak graphic design and in this universe, is also one of the most humiliating things a person can go through.
Katelyn is impressed by Mike’s digital prowess and asks him to help her figure out some automated gimmicks for the Halloween dance—crepe paper just isn’t good enough for this year. He goes “hubba hubba” and “awooga” a bit and agrees to help because he is so horny and he’s never been seen by a Woman before. The two of them start to spend a crazy amount of time together and end up pulling off a really good design for the dance with animatrons and everything. He also designed a light-up cummerbund as part of his outfit (hence the leather bowtie). Katelyn even wants to save a dance with him! It’s almost like their crushes have developed and they have a mutual attraction for each other that Mike is too self-conscious to admit to.
Except! Scott the bully snuck into the school the night before and messed with the programming (remember he’s smart and good at computers too) so with one press of a button, the dance goes haywire and into the danger zone. If this wasn’t a children’s movie, children would be dead from this malfunction. They are able to extinguish any fires pretty quickly, but in typical 90s fashion this little oopsie is enough for everyone to HATE Mike and for him to feel utterly humiliated and run off. Which is where we get to the opening scene where he tries sending an S.O.S. message to space.
A tired and sad Mike Pillsbury goes to bed, soaked in rain and believing he fumbled both any chances with Katelyn and alien communication. The next day, his parents seem pretty fine that he destroyed their satellite dish. Mike seems to have lost his will to live, and worse (for his younger sister who is the typical nag younger sibling) the will to solve (math problems, it was a good joke in the movie). Suddenly, a dog appears—and that dog can talk? This is no dog, this is Barnabus, an alien from a far-away dog planet where they HATE being touched by lesser beings like humans. He explains to Mike that his transmission the night before hit the spacewaves and he came from a alientarian (what is the alien word for “humanitarian”?) organization to answer Mike’s cry for help to be taken away from Earth. Mike is all like, “What the fuck?” and then Barnabus is like, “Come with me, before other aliens with ulterior motives come and grab you.”
The first alien to appear is The Bom, a smelly slime alien who is also a lawyer. He keeps farting, burping, and sliming all over Mike’s room right as Katelyn tries to call Mike and let him know it was okay that he ruined the dance last night. Because of all the commotion, Katelyn gets offended by what she’s hearing on the other line and is like, “Mike we are DONE!” After ruining Mike’s whole life, The Bom explains that now that someone from Earth was able to communicate with space, the intergalactic protections for primitive life no longer apply and different aliens are going to come to Earth as they please. Considering that The Bom just did a human rights violation on Mike’s love life, there’s no way he would retain him as a personal lawyer. He says get lost and tries to go about his day.
Now that his chance of kissing Katelyn on the mouth are slim to none, Mike agrees to leave Earth with Barnabus so that he can be alone forever. He still wants to make amends with her, so he goes to her house one last time. Before she comes downstairs, a different alien named the Loafer Alien is a talent agent and pitches to Mike a television show about an immigrant (him) leaving Earth, saying his life story would be an intergalactic hit. While this pitch meeting happens, the slug-like alien paralyses Mike, and Katelyn is once again left in the dust by a MAN.
Nick, Mike’s friend who has that little brother, named Jay, meet him at the treehouse. They are flabbergasted to see so many aliens in the treehouse, all desperate to have Mike come with them. Here, we see the lawyer, talent agent, and Barnabus alongside a new alien: a lady fish who is extremely horny, like so diabolically horny, for this nerdy teenage boy. She really needs to up her standards!
They all leave immediately after sensing a presence: the Thoad. We quickly learn that the Thoad is an intergalactic criminal who loves to steal things (meaning, living beings) for his collection. Now that Earth has been opened up as fair game for being a technologically advanced planet (thanks to a 1999 satellite dish), the Thoad is here to catch his prize. He wants Mike, probably for his advanced intellect, but snatches up the younger brother Jay instead. Oopsie!
The Thoad is going to come back, and that’s going to be their chance to go into its portal and save Jay. Sometime along the way, Katelyn comes to the house, sees the aliens, believes Mike entirely and is ready to help out. They need someone to be a distraction, so Mike and the gang ask Scott if he will help. Why would he help someone he hates so much? Well, they did say that the Thoad would be looking for Earth’s best specimen, obviously Scott, and with an inflated ego he is willing to help. According to plan, he’s caught by the Thoad’s giant tongue and the kids and dog follow him.
What they find is a very large jungle-musem of sorts, with exhibits all over the place with different alien creatures the Thoad has kidnapped over the years. We see some kind of flameball creature, and then we see a Hanzel, the species that Mike likes to draw comics about, they ARE real after all! Meanwhile, in the human prison, the Thoad worked fast to make an exact replica of Mike’s backyard, where Jay and Scott have to hang out at until someone comes to save them. For being a little kid who just got kidnapped by the worst alien in the galaxy, Jay is unreasonably calm—he really believes in Mike.
Oh no! The Thoad found them! And he’s a British guy! Actually nevermind that’s just his costume skin, he’s actually a very nasty-looking frog guy with an unreasonably long tongue. They are able to hold him off for a bit, where they find Scott and Jay, and somehow Mike just telepathically knows how to unlock the gate. Maybe he is an alien after all? (He is not.) They save the humans and release all the other creatures held captive before escaping back to Earth.
The stargate is open long enough for the Thoad to follow them, but before he can do anymore kidnapping, the intergalactic police show up and arrest him. Barnabus barks like a dog for the first time and Katelyn is back to liking Mike again. They don’t kiss but you know that they want to.
The movie ends as it began, at a football game where Mike is a foot shorter than every other guy on the team where he will get his shit rocked and also some brain damage. Barnabus comes by to let him know that the satellite transmission was a fluke and Earth is still protected by the primitive planet clause. He also tells Mike that he can scratch him behind the ears for the first time and learns how good dogs on Earth got it. Barnabus offers to let Mike come with him back to his planet, but Mike declines—even though he may not always fit in, Earth is his home. There’s a cheerleader who is horny for him now, and that’s all that a guy needs to stay put and not be so dramatic to open up yet another can of worms.
Can of Worms is not a movie I remember watching as a young child. Unfortunately for this movie, it was sandwiched between Zenon and Smart House, which are two absolute banger classics. It must not have been played much after its initial release, and I do understand why. For one, the story is not as compelling as some of the other ones that Disney Channel was churning out at the time, and the alien puppets were pretty scary and gross. I personally didn’t really like watching anything that was too gross or scary (we can’t get into Halloweentown 2 quite yet), and I’m guessing a lot of other six year-olds in 2000 felt similarly.
Some of the dynamics in this movie are also very confusing. Like, we get that Mike is a nerd who nobody likes because he’s smart and into computers, but Scott is the hottest boy in school because he’s smart, into computers, and plays football good. The nineties are a very confusing time and I’m so glad that there are no more complicated social dynamics that have ever been worsened with the rise of social media. But anyways, if you want to be anti-nerd you gotta pick a side, writers!
Speaking of the aliens, yes, they are pretty foul looking. Like most things that are old, though, those are beautiful disgusting creatures made my artists and puppeteers—A.I. could never do it like that. Even forgettable movies lost to time are better than whatever slop a computer can puke out in two seconds. I would give Can of Worms a solid middle rating.
