Metacritic reviews

Not surprisingly, considering that it is a Spielberg production, Batteries Not Included is a handsome film, impeccably (and ingeniously) designed by Ted Haworth and enriched by a superb James Horner score that brings a melancholy tinge to its brassy big band sound. Batteries Not Included is in the best Hollywood tradition of raising serious questions in a thoroughly entertaining way.

Matthew Robbins acquits himself honorably as cowriter and director of this gentle 1987 fantasy about miniature spaceships that land on a tenement in Manhattan's Lower East Side and save the tenants from imminent expulsion and disaster at the hands of greedy real estate developers.

Cronyn and Tandy rescue the movie from looking altogether like a retread, and the saucers do their part, too. Designed by Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects wizards, the saucers swoop and vibrate and blink and purr and even have children, which they assemble out of old toasters and other househood appliances. "Batteries Not Included" is a sweet, cheerful and funny family entertainment.

Batteries Not Included could have used more imaginative juices to distinguish it from other, more enchanting Spielbergian pics where lovable mechanical things solve earthly human dilemmas. Still, it’s suitable entertainment for kids.

Children may enjoy this, but their adult escorts will have a harder time...It's been well made and, especially in Miss Tandy's case, acted with a sense of fun. But the time for this brand of fantasy may have come and gone.

The performances are passable: Tandy and Cronyn are talented enough to avoid looking foolish. The special effects team has created some truly convincing sequences that give the saucers more personality than the human characters.

This film is so harmless it`s boring.

You end up with this perky but pointless rehash of the cute alien format that became embedded in the late ‘80s.

Robbins' handling of the human element is as sickly and soggy as a dunked doughnut, and the script makes gonks out of its characters. But the flirting frisbee scenes are pretty neat.

Batteries is a strange kids' movie, a queer mix of violence and otherworldly benevolence. It might have been a good idea, a story of the vanishing urban neighborhood and gentrification by tycoon. But half-pint aliens to the rescue? It's time E.T. went home.