Theatres have been chock-full of high-tech kid-friendly fare this summer with everything from CGI’d robots to animated 3-D dinosaurs to live action wizardry.   Now along comes “Aliens in the Attic,” an adventure-comedy with special effects in the vein of “Goonies” and “Gremlins.”

A family vacation takes a turn for the bizarre when little green guys with powerful technology arrive to enact their plan to take over the world.  

Of course it makes movie sense that the kids are the only ones capable of taking on the aliens to save the earth.  The war gets into full swing with the aliens using a powerful mind-control device, which only the adults are susceptible to, as the kids battle back with a not so powerful potato gun and anything else they can find around their vacation rental.

The alien machine provides much of the humor as well as the perfect excuse for Doris Roberts to display her slapstick chops as the grandmother taken over by it for a rather intense fight scene with Robert Hoffman [Step Up 2: The Streets] whose dancer background is put to good use playing Ricky, the eldest daughter Bethany’s love interest. Hoffman fully committed with all the contorting, falling and painful looking positions he puts his body in while Ricky is under the device’s control for most of the movie.

Ashley Tisdale stars as the boy-crazy teenage Bethany whose intense crush has blinded her to the total jerk qualities of the too-much-older Ricky.  But her eyes begin to open as he gets his much-deserved come-uppance.  Luckily “Aliens” is PG, so Tisdale won’t “alien-ate” her young fanbase by playing too sexy, but they may be teased by the amount of bikini-clad sashaying she does in the film.

Directed by John Shultz [“Honeymooners”, “Like Mike”] “Aliens in the Attic” may be one of the few films shot in New Zealand that doesn’t feel like it.  Strangely, no breathtaking New Zealand landscapes or lush green.  Instead the backdrop looks like just another generic “middle of nowhere” country setting.

“Aliens in the Attic” may not dazzle audiences with its technology, originality or even its locations, but it has some laughs and boasts a talented cast who gave it their all to entertain.