Review: "Earth to Echo" tries very hard to be ET and Super 8 but is an echo of them

"Earth to Echo" PG 
An adult group of mysterious workers is allegedly building a freeway while some friends in high school use found footage techniques to go on one last night quest, but they find an alien instead. An alien crash lands in a Nevada suburb, leading some teenage boys on an adventure to free him and send him home. It sounds like ET from 1982 and like Super 8 from just af ew years back, but it's not. Echo stars a little CGI owl alien thing that is found in the desert and begins to mimik the boys that find it. They soon learn that it is trying to get to as space ship hidden under the neighborhood, and that is why there is a plan to uproot the area and allegedly build a freeway.

It isn't a bad movie, it's just like a cross between Cloverfield, shaky cam stuff, and super 8, and a bit of Paranormal Activity is tossed in. Some of it harkens to ET but more than often, the Goonies is also there, as they attempt to rehash the 80sd boy's journey deal again. It's worth a rental.

The young cast is merely competent and not as charming as those in Goonies or in ET, but they manage.

Review by Adam Browne