Dan Aykroyd: Unplugged on UFOs DVD Review by R.J. Carter
Published: May 15, 2006

Okay, I'll admit to being the sucker for a good UFO documentary. Much
like the slogan plastered across Mulder's poster: I want to believe.
After all, the universe is a very, very big place, and I just can't
imagine God being one for wasted space.
But just exactly what makes Dan Aykroyd the go-to guy for paranormal
phenomena? Did someone think his stint in "Ghostbusters" was for real?
Do they think he has inside information because he married Kim Basinger
in "My Stepmother is an Alien?"

Apparently, the connection is much more personal than that. And while I
think Director David Sereda's parallels to Albert Einstein are a bit
laughable, Aykroyd does have his own experiences. Some may recall that
he hosted a show on SciFi channel called Out There. Through this, he
made quite the list of connections. One day, he apparently made a
connection that was a little too hot. He describes an incident that
occurred while he was preparing to tape a new episode. He had stepped
outside and was taking a phone call to
come back for a Saturday Night Live skit.

During this conversation, Aykroyd claims he was approached by the
notorious Men in Black -- not Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones, either, but
the possible real magilla, complete with a large black vehicle. They
watched him, he turned away, turned back -- and they were gone. Within
seconds.
"Two hours later," says Aykroyd, "we were told we were not to continue
taping, and the show was cancelled, and none of them would air.

Was that an MIB experience?"
Fortunately for fans of Out There, there's the possibility of
repackaging the show for DVD. But whatever would have become of the
information that might have been disclosed that day may now never be
revealed.
Would that the rest of this documentary were that interesting. Aykroyd
is not the host of this documentary; nor is he the primary subject.
Rather, Sereda has placed a couple of cameras around him and Aykroyd to
record them talking while Aykroyd smokes. In between the bits of
conversation, the viewer is bombarded with photograph after photograph,
video after video, of streaky, grainy, or downright hoaxy photographs of
unidentified lights and objects -- many of them shown over and over
again, either for effect or for lack of having enough photos to provide
an 80-minute slideshow. We get to hear repeatedly from former astronaut,
Gordon Cooper (always introduced as
"American Hero", which all our astronauts are but doesn't really need to
be hammered quite so squarely every single time) and his experiences in
the fifties with UFOs. And we also see former Canadian Minister of
Defense, Paul Hellyer, speaking out about the politics of alien
encounters.

Aykroyd himself is asked about multiple dimensions, multiverses, and
time travel, as though Sereda is hoping to channel Heisenberg or
Podolski. Aykroyd mentions a handful of movies about alien encounters,
such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and uses these as a basis for
forming a philosophy of what aliens might want.

On the whole, however, there's nothing neither new nor groundbreaking in
this DVD. If you haven't ever heard of Roswell, New Mexico, if you
didn't see the news stories about the "Phoenix Lights", or if you simply
don't have an
Internet connection to browse through the hundreds of accounts and
photographs on the web, then this documentary might grab you. For those
who are sceptics, there's nothing here to convince you. And for those of
us in the middle, it's a great big, 'meh', difficult to sit through
sequentially, amateurish in cuts, introductions, and the inability of
the director to put any kind of linear quality to the topic thread.
Previews on this disc include "Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs" and "Deck
Dogz".