Allen, the first live-action film from Pearson’s Ludo Studio, follows a man who met an alien as a kid – and becomes obsessed with bringing him back
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If, for whatever reason, you want to feel a bit sad, think too hard about what Elliott from ET would have been like as an adult. Or Coraline, or Matilda, or Chihiro, or those kids in Mary Poppins. The most amazing thing that ever happened in their lives – magic nanny, alien friend, psychic abilities, otherworldly adventures – was already over when they were kids. If that bad Harry Potter play taught us anything, they probably all grew into loser adults.
This is the central premise for Allen, a new Netflix family film by Daley Pearson, co-founder of Ludo Studio, the Brisbane production company behind a little show called Bluey. As a kid growing up in the small coastal town of Coolum, Petey (TJ Power) happens across a friendly, bug-eyed extraterrestrial; the little guy can’t quite pronounce “alien”, so they settle on “Allen”. Petey and Allen are best pals for one blissful month, sharing a love for Cheezels, VHS and board games – until suddenly, Allen is summoned home. Decades later, Petey is trapped in a state of arrested development and obsession that frustrates everyone around him – until Allen returns, for surprising reasons I will not spoil here.
‘How can a TV show make you feel such emotions?’ The Bluey composer shares the trick to music that ‘hits you in the feels’Read moreThere are a lot of nods to ET in Allen (“pretty aggressive nods,” Pearson laughs) – obviously the premise but also the score and even the poster, which features Allen and Petey’s fingers reaching to one another, and a floating Cheezel in the middle.
When I tell him that ET is among my favourite films, the 42-year-old winces. “Oh, no,” he says, rubbing his chin. “OK, we’ll talk about that.”
Allen, which Pearson co-directed with Jeffrey Walker and co-wrote with Sophie Miller, is the stuff of his childhood: ET, the Nightmare board game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lion King, Terminator 2; the opening scene tracks through Petey’s tapes, games and figurines. “I was using the stuff that I love to tell the story of not being able to let go of the stuff you love, and how it maybe holds you back,” Pearson says. So, a film about the dangers of nostalgia absolutely packed with nostalgia. Pop culture in the 1980s and 1990 was like an “onslaught”: “It was the best thing you could ever want as a child. We were like drug addicts and these corporations had us hooked.”
But just as Petey loses Allen, Pearson experienced a life-changing loss. When he was 13, his older brother Liam died of cancer aged just 26. Pearson has not talked about this much in the past, even in his personal life, but making Allen has helped him unpick how it affected him. “My family must be like, ‘Wow, he’s spoken more about this to the Courier Mail than to us!’” he laughs.
View image in fullscreen‘It has never felt like you could put Bluey on pause,’ says Daley Pearson. Photograph: David Kelly/The GuardianLiam’s death is intrinsically tied to why Pearson is fixated on pop culture from that point in his life. “He was my best friend, the best thing ever to me,” he says. “As much as I say Allen is about Liam, it’s sort of about the perfume of Liam – that feeling of losing something and wanting it back so badly that you don’t do anything with your life, you just sit there and wait. I only listen to old songs, I have all the old toys around the Ludo office and I only watch old movies. It connects me to a past that doesn’t exist any more. And it’s bad. And I started thinking, I’m rushing back to the womb, I’m trying to stay in that bubble that got popped.”
As well as producing the biggest kids show in the world, Pearson is behind another huge hit: the 2022 horror film Talk To Me. Ludo was too busy with Bluey to develop Talk To Me, so Pearson gave the concept to the Philippou brothers, who directed it. When I point out that it is another story about not being able to let go, Pearson looks stunned. “Yeah, that’s right,” he says. “I didn’t even think of that. How funny. I guess you are what you are what you are.”
View image in fullscreenTJ Power and Allen in Allen, a film about the dangers of nostalgia which is ‘absolutely packed’ with the stuff. Photograph: NetflixThis may all make Allen sound far more grave than it is; if kids don’t notice any of this they will simply enjoy, as Pearson puts it, “a silly, stupid alien pulling the carpet out from people constantly”.
“We hope that bit is there for them – and for mum and dad, maybe some of the other bit. But not at the expense of a ridiculous alien who sings karaoke,” he says. “I hope you press play and you have a giddy time.”
Allen himself required years of “intensive” development, says Pearson: “People would have invented six new Boeing planes in the time we created Allen.” Ludo and the Brisbane FX company Formation Effects initially tried to make Allen as an animatronic puppet, but the end result was “frightening”, Pearson snorts. “We’ll save that for the bad sequel where there are terrible versions of Allen.”
The final Allen is a puppet, with some VFX on top for his expressions and movement. Pearson didn’t want Allen to be “Jar Jar Binks-y or Gremlin-y – he wasn’t throwing records across the room or doing Abbott and Costello physical comedy – he’s introspective, not zany.” This meant that until his little facial expressions and monosyllabic voice were added in, Allen looked “really boring” for a long time. “The edit was a big trust process!”
View image in fullscreen‘People would have invented six new Boeing planes in the time we created Allen.’ Photograph: David Kelly/The GuardianThe other reason Allen took so long? “It has never felt like you could put Bluey on pause. I didn’t feel confident enough that people would wait … Maybe it’s just to do with being from Queensland or Australia, but I don’t feel like those amazing production companies in America that can line up opportunities like planes.”
Wait, I say – doesn’t a success like Bluey not instill you with enough confidence to pass on one opportunity and know another will come? “I don’t feel it, if it does,” Pearson replies. “Bluey has been the luckiest thing in the world. I’m not being naive or self-effacing. I’m aware of how one-in-a-million the opportunity was and how hard everyone worked on it. But I still feel like everything could go tomorrow. Bluey just put a bit more pressure on us, I guess, because now we’re known as the people who did that!”