Movie Review
Monsters vs. Aliens
"Monsters vs. Aliens" (quality rating: 6 out od 10) Animated feature. Co-Directors: Rob Letterman, Conrad Vernon Screenplay: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky, Rob Letterman, Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger Voices: Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Kiefer Sutherland, Will Arnett Time: 1 hr., 35 min. Rating: PG (sci-fi action, some crude humor and mild vulgarity)
Dazzling action for the kids, easy plot to follow, appealing monsters. Frankly, though, except for the sexy 50-foot tall heroine of Barbie-like proportions and the longest legs in the known universe, nothing really much for adults.
She's some cutie, built for anything except all-male action, but she somehow can mash and smash with the best. Her monster cohorts are, as with hero or heroine's helpers in all such films, of low self-esteem badly needing to be told (this stuff just never stops in today's animation characters) that they are really and truly beings of strong skills and talents and should stride forth to assert themselves to command their place in the world.
The film's action motif is high-ratcheted stuff, with every motive apparently directed to very short attention spans. The scale is kept grand, the goals simple. The general concept imagination level is not impressive. Dialogue is primarily for the tots, with just a few gratuitous references at adult level. One gets the distinct sense that at the scripting level, nobody really tried very hard at this.
California girl Susan Murphy (voice of Reese Witherspoon) is minding her own business getting married to TV weatherman Derek (voice: Paul Rudd) when all of a sudden she's almost demolished by a meteor that's full of weird energy from space. Very soon, Susan finds herself to be 49-feet-11-inches tall. As to her flimsy wedding dress -- back off, boys -- that's politically corrected so that it grows with her.
Worse, now comes the military who's actually been rounding up monsters for many years. They throw her onto a special compound reserved for her kind. Also locked up are B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a one-eyed blue glob who doesn't care what or who it devours; the Missing Link (Will Arnett), a weird amphibian; Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), a small scientist with a bug's head; and Insectosaurus, a hideous larva who's seven times taller than Susan.
They'll become the MonSquad, liberated to face the baddie invading monsters and their gargantuan robot. The aliens had shown absolutely no inclination to reciprocate the U.S. President's (Stephen Colbert) friendly advances. General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) of the U.S. military will direct the monster heroes.
But even with the robot destroyed and vanquished, Susan and her crew will now have to face its inventor, the villainous four-eyed squid Galaxhar (Rainn Wilson) who arrives on his scary-looking spaceship realizing that if you want to take over Earth, you really have to do the job yourself. He is perfectly capable of producing an unlimited army of clones. This calls for a mighty pooling of talents by the superstar monsters.
So you get to see the colossus combatants tromping through San Francisco to face each other at the Golden Gate Bridge.
Interesting is that although there's a world of destruction going on, nobody anywhere is hurt. This is not untypical in modern-day adventure cartoon scenarios, featuring lots of situations replete with violence, but the violence itself is not satirized. That is, the victims are never, as in real action adventure, shown mauled, mutilated or even seriously harmed. Note the comparison with the old-time cartoons in which a cartoon character, as in the Road Runner series, got crushed and exploded, then in the next scene there he was none the worse for wear. In these modern times, such lampooning would no doubt miss the kids' sense of humor as world violence is now entirely real.
Anyway, this film could have used some smart talk and inventive action.
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Marty Meltz, 30-year former films critic for the Portland (Maine) Sunday Telegram. Offering right-to-the-point reviews that address directly the question of the film's entertainment value to you. Films have personalities. It doesn't matter who wrote it, who directs it, who stars in it, if it doesn't reach out to you with charisma. I examine its honesty and intelligence. Are you being respected, or are you being jerked around?
Article Source: Marty Meltz
Movie Review: Monsters Vs Aliens