Most definitely Darker and Edgier than its parent series in some parts, the attendant wacky humor often making the transition to Black Comedy with jarring effect.
Stars Martin Sheen as a xenophobic General Ripper type with a Freudian Excuse who wishes to see ALF dead.
Project: ALF provides examples of:
- Big Bad Ensemble: Colonel Milfoil and Dexter Moyers.
- Black Comedy: Mostly near the beginning, actually, when the traumatized ALF simply cannot forget the fate of one of his researchers, and ends up running through a half-dozen more with his grisly descriptions.
- Brick Joke: When ALF is going for his interview, he's told that his afternoon will either be dinner or shock therapy, with ALF praying for the former. As the review board breaks up, one of the things they do agree on is that ALF won't be doing his tests until the review is completed.
- Chekhov's Gun: Moyers' recording equipment, used in the Engineered Public Confession noted below.
- Deadpan Snarker: ALF, of course, but much of the rest of the cast too.
- Dead Star Walking: Ed Begley, Jr. as Dr. Warner, who gets fried by his own electrocution machine.
- Freudian Excuse: An alien kidnapped and tortured Milfoil's mother, resulting in his current vendetta against ALF.
- Engineered Public Confession: Mullican activates Moyers' cameras just so he can discuss the requisition order Milfoil took out for the poison; Milfoil specifically throws his Second Lieutenant Reese under the bus and burns the order on camera, sealing his downfall.
- General Ripper: Milfoil, who seeks to use a chemical bio-weapon to kill ALF.
- High-Voltage Death: Dr. Warner, due to the electroshock machine having one major design flaw.
- Human-Focused Adaptation: A good chunk of the film focuses on the two human leads trying to protect ALF and their Unresolved Sexual Tension, with ALF almost in a seemingly supporting role, as an alien that happens to be with them making wisecracks. This is one of several reasons why the film isn't looked at too fondly amongst fans.
- Interspecies Romance: ALF wants this with Nina, Moyers' secretary, and she doesn't seem to be unwilling, but it may just have been a Honey Trap.
- Large Ham: Milfoil again; the only thing that keeps him from being downright scary is his brief Chewing the Scenery moments.
- Put on a Bus: It's mentioned that the Tanners were relocated to Mozambique and later Reykjavik following ALF's capture.
- Sleep Mask: When Melissa and Rick come to rescue ALF from his imprisonment in his luxury cell, ALF is wearing one of these which he claims is to keep his cold cream on. It is really just another symbol of how he has turned his jail cell into his personal spa.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Rick seems intended to be one for Willie when it comes to his dynamic with ALF. Several of their scenes together seem designed to try and recreate the ALF/Willie dynamic from the old show.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: ALF's friends Skip and Rhonda never come back for him in this film, even though they were present in the series finale, ready to beam him back aboard their ship before the military showed up.
