1990s childhood nostalgia and spiky headed alien reign in Netflix’s Allen

If you were walking along the shoreline of the Gold Coast’s Miami Beach in July last year, you would’ve seen an old-fashioned carnival come into view.

It had a Ferris wheel and that arcade game with the rotating clown heads, a fudge stall, a school bake sale table and a soft serve ice cream van. It looked like every other small-town carnival all Australians grew up with.

The first indication that something wasn’t quite right was the sponsorship sign for Coolum Council, a city three hours north on the Sunshine Coast. Then you might notice that the carnival was fenced off and entry was barred, even though the lights were on and people were milling about inside.

It wasn’t a carnival, but a movie set, a recreation of a kite festival for the Australian streaming film, Allen.

Allen comes from Ludo Studios, the Queensland production company behind Australia’s juggernaut cultural export, Bluey. The movie is the brainchild of Ludo co-founder Daley Pearson, and child is the key word here because Allen is all about tapping into your inner child.

The family film is centred on a character named Petey (T.J. Power as an adult, Edward A. O’Sullivan as a child) who, when he was a kid meets an alien he names Allen. Allen becomes Petey’s whole world until one night, Allen leaves without warning.

Decades later, Petey is approaching middle-age and while everyone else around him – his brother Jaden (Josh Helman), his friends Carly (Charlotte Nicdao) and Sarah (Emily Barclay) -has built out a life for themselves, Petey is stuck in a state of arrested development, convinced Allen will return if only he could make contact.

Allen takes his inspiration from E.T. with his bulbous head and small body, while other inspirations included the translucent skin of a green tree frog or the wry smile of a gecko. He has spikes on his head and three fingers spring off his enlarged palms.

It took years to develop and finalise the design, and on set that day at Miami Beach, there were five puppets on hand, each with different functions (one had more active finger movements, another was more portable) while a motion-capture performer stood in at other times.

He is pretty adorable, especially if you happen to love big-eyed anthropomorphic creatures that seem like very smart pets. But not everyone thought so.

“I think a lot of people find he is a bit scary looking,” Daley told The Nightly. “The story made you love him. He’s got these brilliant, beautiful eyes, as in E.T. So we definitely tried to steal from the best in terms of just the spirit of Allen’s design.

“We wanted him to feel like something a 10-year-old would pick up and take home.

“Because of the story of Allen, you needed to love him immediately, and then because of the end of the second act surprise, you needed to hang onto that love for him.”

Allen’s name might be on the poster but he’s the conduit to telling Petey’s story, one that might be familiar to everyone who has ever indulged in a bit of nostalgia.

Pearson, who co-directed the film with Jeffrey Walker and co-wrote it with Sophie Miller, is a kid of the 1990s, and in that first sequence set during the era, every frame is packed with references.

They’re playing Jenga and Nightmare, there’s a folder full of Tazos and a shelf lined up with yo-yos, and figurines ranging from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to The Land Before Time are scattered throughout Petey’s bedroom. It’s highly evocative of a time and place.

Pearson said it was a big job for the production’s lawyers to get all the rights and intellectual property released, but it was crucial to the specificity of Petey’s emotional connection to all the accoutrements of his childhood.

“I hope by going as specific as we went that people feel the authenticity of it, and get where we’re coming from,” Pearson explained. “Even if it might not be the childhood they grew up with, they would’ve grown up with a childhood like it.”

All those cultural references are stories in themselves, whether it’s the one that was pre-packaged and sold to kids, or the ones those children then expanded and created for themselves.

“It’s not just name-checking to name-check nostalgia,” Pearson continued. “It’s because these things really mean something to me. It’s like the perfume of an ex or something. These things aren’t just toys or music or movies or games. They’re things that connected us to our brothers and sisters, or parents and friends, who we now miss.

“Even if they’re still around, we miss who we were and who they were then.

“There was something about using the stories we grew up with or the myths of those stories, and not being able to let go of them to tell this story.”

Petey can’t let go of those things and what they represent as much as he can’t let go of Allen, even as everyone around is imploring him to grow up and move on.

There’s a lot of guilt attached to nostalgia, as if spending time reminiscing about the past, pulling on those memories stop you from living in the present, or being a serious adult.

If you glance at Pearson’s career and the projects he’s been involved with as a producer or a writer – Bluey, Content (a web series about an accidental influencer), Robbie Hood (Dylan River’s excellent coming-of-age short series), a Marvel comedic short with Chris Hemsworth – they suggest someone who is very much in touch with his inner child.

Allen, then, could be read as Pearson’s exploration of trying to find the balance between, as he put it, “wonder and responsibility”. “Petey” phonetically sounds a lot like Daley, as well as a nod to Peter Pan. Pearson still has his Ninja Turtles toys, and a copy of E.T. on VHS.

“I was really worried about this idea of ‘I’ll let it all go and move on, you’ve got to grow up now’ because it’s just not true. This stuff is beautiful,” he said.

“But I was also worried about the idea of ‘no, it’s great to be a kid’. Those endings, we’ve seen those films. There’s something about having to say goodbye to stuff, but also loving it and holding onto it.

“We always hoped this character would end up somewhere between wonder and responsibility.

“The best people I’ve met are people who usually hold onto both. They’re inspiring and playful and they’re beautiful people. It’s a hard thing to do.”

Allen is streaming on Netflix from November 12

The writer travelled to Queensland as a guest of Netflix