YMMV / Pod People

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The music-and-magic scene with all the things flying around. Right out of nowhere. Especially egregious because you'd think a bunch of Reality Warper powers would come in handy when dealing with those poachers. They are never demonstrated by Trumpy's mother, or even by Trumpy except for that one segment.
    • Tommy seeing a lion and a hippo when he looks through his telescope during the scene is never explained. You're apparently supposed to infer that Trumpy somehow got the telescope to see all the way to Africa, or something. It does make some good Padding for the filmmakers using cheap stock footage.
  • Why does Bill have a Sprite sign on his house? It's sort of implied that the house used to be an inn (with that huge, well-stocked bar), but not very specifically.
  • In the version used on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the intro and outro, which were taken from a completely different film.
• Critical Dissonance: Despite how mocked the film has been and how savaged by critics it was, it reportedly sold very well in France and remained amongst the top of the video sales charts for several months straight.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Trumpy is actually a fairly likable character. It helps that he never speaks, and Crow projects a very bizarre personality onto him.
• Fridge Brilliance: The poachers mention someone named Bill who went legit and works with the rangers. Later, we're introduced to Tommy's uncle who is named Bill and has ranger friends. Also, while not close to what you'd call villainous, Uncle Bill does have enough of a Jerkass streak that you could picture him fitting right in with the three poachers if he had been a friend of theirs.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Trumpy's mother is compared to a cross between a bear and a pig. Add a man in there and you might be getting somewhere...
  • The story of a kid befriending a being with telekinetic powers is nothing new, but including it within a Four Lines, All Waiting narrative that features a creature killing people in the woods, all accompanied by a synth soundtrack, would later be done (a lot better) by Stranger Things.
  • Tommy's English voice sounds incredibly similar to BMO.
  • Even though it was released a few years before the series began, Trumpy definitely looks a lot more like ALF than E.T., which Mystery Science Theater 3000 mentions in their riffing.
  • With Donald Trump's election to President of the U.S., many, many lines are even more absurdly funny. Especially so after he was charged with felonies and fraudulent schemes in at least 4 different jurisdictions.
    You're naughty, Trumpy. Very naughty.
• Hollywood Homely: Tracy complains that she's the only one with no boyfriend because she's not pretty. She isn't any worse looking than the other girls. However it's unclear whether the film actually expects us to find her unattractive, or if it's an element of the other self-esteem issues she displays.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Given that Mystery Science Theater 3000 makes a Trumpy/Donald Trump joke, it was only natural that mash-ups of Trumpy and Trump would start showing up for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
    • In fact, when this aired as part of the Turkey Day 2016 Marathon, the Trump references on social media were very frequent.
  • (okay sign) "It stinks!" ^note Once the band finishes recording their mishearing-laced song, the singer does the okay sign then says that the song stinks. It makes more sense in the film's native Spain, as detailed below in Values Dissonance, but Joel & the Bot's repeated riffing of the gesture has made it meme-worthy.
  • "Idiot Control Now!" ^note The singer is supposed to be saying "hear the engines roar now" but he says it so quickly that it sounds like "idiot control now".
• Older Than They Think: The basic plotline is strikingly similar to Night Skies, the original Steven Spielberg Sci-Fi Horror project that eventually evolved into E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial—a human family is terrorized by aliens, but the young, good alien develops a bond with the family's young child. Whether that's just coincidence, the filmmakers knew about Night Skies, or both stories were separate riffs on an infamous 1955 incident in Kentucky that became a celebrated bit of UFO lore isn't clear.
• One-Scene Wonder: In the recording studio scene, the engineer who wears the "I'm a Virgin Islander" shirt and the Record Producer (named Gary) who Tracy hits on after the session.
• Refrain from Assuming: There actually was a soundtrack EP released, and the title of the song popularly known as "Burning Rubber Tires" or "Hear The Engines Roar Now" (or "Idiot Control Now") is listed in Spanish as "Rugen los motores" ("The Motors Roar").
• Special Effect Failure: An audio example with the obviously synthesizer-generated bird chirps at the band's campsite.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Tommy abandoning Trumpy actually manages to be a little heartbreaking.
  • Even if she killed a whole bunch of people, there's something oddly tragic about Trumpy's mother disintegrating after she's been shot to death.
  • The ending, with Trumpy being forced into hiding after losing both a friend and his mother. Kevin Murphy, in The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, sums it up pretty well:
    At the end, Trumpy stands forlornly in the woods, the last of his odd kind. It's all pretty depressing.
• Ugly Cute: Trumpy once again. As Kevin Murphy puts it in The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, "he's cute in an offbeat way".
• Uncertain Audience: What happens when Executive Meddling tries to force a horror movie into being an E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial knockoff? This. Because the movie is attempting to play (half-assedly) to the child demographic, they obviously can't show any gory or creative sorts of deaths. No gore means the movie can't appeal to fans of the Horror genre. At the same time, because people do still drop like flies throughout the film's runtime, it's far too dark for kids.
• Values Dissonance: In Spain, the "OK" sign means "That was worthless" (it's not an "ok" sign, it's a zero). So Rick's sudden switch from giving an OK sign and smiling to "It stinks!" makes a bit more sense (and his smile was obviously sarcastic).
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Going forward, here's a tip for any meddling idiot executives: If you're going to doll up a crappy monster movie into a crappy kid's monster movie, you may want to also consider reducing the amount of horrible deaths by about 100%.
• The Woobie: Tommy comes across as a very lonely kid who has no friends until he meets Trumpy. And while his mother and uncle aren't outright abusive, Uncle is still an uncaring jerk and Mother can come across as a bit aloof.

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