Could a cute alien called Allen be the next Bluey? Its creator hopes so

Daley Pearson has a deadpan response when I suggest that his film Allen – in which a cute-ugly alien comes to Earth and befriends a young boy – reminds me just a little of a certain sleeper hit from the 1980s.

“I’ve not seen it,” he says of E.T. The Extraterrestrial, just about managing to keep a straight face as he does so. “I’m going to stick to that line as well. Everyone keeps telling me about it. I have to check it out. It’s Steven Spielberg, right?”

He is, of course, joking. The first feature from Brisbane-based Ludo Studio, the makers of Bluey, is a veritable showbag of references big and small to the movies and TV shows, the music and the games of the 1980s and ’90s, the decades that shaped the 42-year-old who co-wrote (with Sophie Miller) and co-directed (with Jeffrey Walker) the live-action movie.

“I wanted to do something funny about nostalgia,” says Pearson, who co-founded Ludo with Charlie Aspinwall in 2012 (the pair serve as executive producers of Bluey, which was created by Joe Brumm and is officially the world’s most-watched show). “It started with a funny idea, what happens to the kids in those movies … when they grow up to be not as special as they were told they’d be.”

The sense of disconnect between the promise and the reality can leave you, he says, “in a state of arrested development”.

That is very much where we find Petey (TJ Power), who still dreams of reconnecting with the funny creature from outer space who disappeared back into the ether before he’d even hit puberty.

The adult Petey lives in a flat beneath the home of brother Jaden (Josh Helman) and his wife Carly (Charlotte Nicdao). Though they too met Allen when they were kids, they’ve long since put aside such childish things – unlike Petey, who has never really moved on.

Though it’s a family-friendly comedy, Pearson readily admits there’s also a sense of sadness and loss about Allen. Everyone has, he says, a moment that “pops you out of that childhood bubble” – and Petey’s is the disappearance of the best friend he’d ever had.

“It could be a death, or it could be divorce, or you move away [from friends], or your dog runs away. It could be something small or big,” he says.

“I had a brother who passed away when I was 14 ... [This film] is about missing this part of your childhood and wanting it back.”

Daley Pearson, co-director of Allen

In Pearson’s case, it was very much at the bigger end of the scale.

“I had a brother who passed away when I was 14, and that was what popped me out of childhood,” he says. The nostalgia in his film is, he admits, “about missing this part of your childhood and wanting it back … I hope there’s a little bit of a real heart beating, a real feeling of loss and longing that gives the film a bit of an anchor.”

In littering his film with tokens of a certain time – the Jenga sets, the Michael Jackson songs, the video board game Nightmare (created, he proudly informs me, in Brisbane, just like Bluey and Allen) – the filmmakers were sowing it with mnemonic triggers.

“We wanted things in there that you’ve forgotten you remember,” he says. “There was a bit of nostalgia porn to it, but it’s more that those things really meant something to us. When I see those things, or play with those things, or listen to those things, I do remember my brother or my family. It’s a little portal key to that sort of stuff.”

In a sense, he continues, nostalgia is both an element of the film and its subject matter: “It’s about missing the past, but it’s also about missing the things that this stuff gives us access to so easily – like smelling the perfume of a former partner or something. You just get hooked back into that time and place.”

Pearson’s take on the deep soak of nostalgia is a little more complex than merely basking in the rosy glow, though. “It’ll drown you if you keep hold of that past too much,” he says. “It’s an anchor that’ll keep carrying you down. But if you can hold on to it and let it float you up, then it’s so special.

“The real path to happiness begins in relaxing and letting go.”

If that all feels like a lot of weight for a family film to carry, it is. But Allen isn’t weighed down by it. It’s bright, buoyant and busy. But above all, it has a brilliant conceived and executed alien at its centre.

Whenever Allen is on screen, the film comes to life. He’s cute, but not cloyingly so. He’s also a bit mischievous, and at times has an air of menace akin to the pocket-sized monsters of Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1985). He is, in short, a star. But getting him there took some trial and error.

Allen is a mix of CGI and puppetry. There was also an animatronic version, though he didn’t make the final cut.“It came out looking a little like Allen’s mean older brother,” says Pearson. “It would definitely have tipped the scales into some sort of horror. We said we’d use it for a sequel if we needed the bad version of Allen to come back because it was quite severe.”

And what about a second coming for the alien? Could we see a sequel? A series? Games? Is there scope for Allen to become the content machine, and merch monster, that Bluey is?

“We’ve got some ideas, it would be incredible, but we’d better see what people say first. We can’t get ahead of ourselves,” says Pearson. “But I would love it. It always felt like once Alf [TV’s favourite alien of the 1980s] left, there was just an open space for a vehicle like this, and it would be a dream.”

Allen is streaming on Netflix from November 12.

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