Monsters vs Aliens (2009) – on rental. The productions coming out from DreamWorks Animation has been uneven for several years now and lacking the consistent quality of its rival, Pixar Animation Studios. Its most recent production Monsters vs Aliens isn’t going to win any awards, but funnily I enjoyed this film a lot more than the last animated picture I saw, Pixar’s Up.
Monsters vs Aliens tells the story of a young woman Susan (voiced by the always fun to watch and listen to Reese Witherspoon) who on her wedding day gets smacked by a crashing meteorite. Imbued with the rock’s substance, she gains superpowers: specifically, giant size, strength and invulnerability.
Before she can recover from her shock though, she’s labeled a ‘monster’, gets captured by government agencies and is put together with other ‘monsters’ – all of whom are all unintended effects of experiments gone awry. Among them is a brilliant but mad scientist who’s been turned into a cockroach and aptly named Dr. Cockroach, an amphibious fish-ape named the Missing Link, and an indestructible gelatinous blob of jelly, named B.O.B.
Doomed to spend the remainder of her life away from the rest of the humanity, this gang of monster misfits however return to save the day when Earth is threatened with an, well, alien invasion. So thus the title comes ‘Monsters vs Aliens’ LOL.
To say that Monsters ‘borrows’ ideas from other films wouldn’t be exactly fair – because when the numerous references to other sci-fiction and alien movies pop up every other minute in this film, you’re not certain is Monsters just merely paying tribute or just outright plagiarizing from them. There are references to The Fly in Dr. Cockroach’s genesis, the Vulcan hand greeting sign from Star Trek, clone alien manufacturing that’s straight out from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, aliens that look exactly like those in Mars Attack, uploading viruses into alien mother ships from Independence Day, and that five note motif from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Heck – even the main theme from Beverly Hills Cop shows up.
Not all the references got laughs from me though. A few were pretty flat, and others were seemingly included just to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown in. But enough worked to elicit chuckles especially if you’re familiar with Hollywood classics listed in the above. And there were also other laughs coming from the slapstick and physical comedy abound in the film.
What did work consistently well also was the voice-acting and that the characters themselves were appealing. I’ve always liked Reese Witherspoon’s film output (Just like Heaven remains one of my favorite romantic comedies), and though she’s providing just the voice of Susan in Monsters, she lends to her animated character the same quirky and sympathetic personality that you see in her live motion pictures. There’s also House M.D.’s lead Hugh Laurie in the voice of Dr. Cockroach but he’s in the same madcap mode from his earlier and famous role in the Black Adder Brit-comedy series.
The film’s ending leaves plenty of opportunities for follow-ups, but it looks unlikely that we’ll ever see one. Apparently the film didn’t do well enough in the international audience to warrant a sequel.
Oh well. At least I can always return to this movie on rental.:)
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