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Nobody wins in Monsters vs. Aliens
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Insectosaurus
I wrote an article the other day comparing Pixar movies to those from DreamWorks in honor of the release of Monsters vs. Aliens, a DreamWorks picture. While doing research for that article I realized how good the Pixar movies really are, and how mediocre most of the DreamWorks ones are. Monsters vs. Aliens positions itself squarely in the mediocre pile, possibly worse in some ways, and I could almost tell this right from the start. Sometimes you just have that feeling, whether it was the oversized eyes of Susan (Reese Witherspoon) before she becomes Ginormica, or the overdone expressions of just about every human character including the President (Stephen Colbert), there really never was a rhythm, just a series of hopeless unfunny gags.
Maybe I am being too harsh, but as my wife pointed out, the trailers were misleading. Thinking that this may be a little more of a humorous Independence Day spoof, it turned out being a study in feminism. Susan/Ginormica is about to get married, when she is hit by a meteor and turns into a giant. The government takes her away and places it with other “monsters” and they are called upon (eventually) to stop an alien invasion. That is only a minor part of the movie. Even though they have to stop another invasion, the focus remains on Ginormica and her desire to get back to her normal life. The fact that her life can’t be normal when she is huge takes a little while to dawn on her, but that is all part of the finding herself process. If this doesn’t sound like what you expected then join the club.
Not that the message is bad, just slightly boring, and there aren’t enough laughs or memorable characters to make up for it. In fact there really aren’t any laughs until we get to B.O.B (Seth Rogan), and my favorite Insectosaurus (see above), a gigantic grub that makes one hilarious noise. Unfortunately, we don’t get enough of them, or the other monsters really, and are forced to deal with the plot of Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson from The Office) and his eventual need to take over earth.
I did not see this in 3-D and that really wouldn’t matter much to the movie, although you could tell that it may make a difference for kids, as they need something to make up for the rest of it. The cast is first rate, but that doesn’t help when the story isn’t. A comment I received this week suggested that there were animated movies before Toy Story that had celebrity voices, which is very true, but those movies didn’t have an entire cast of celebrity actors like this one does, and I think studios bank on that being enough to make movies like this financially viable. On a separate note, one of the most amazing things to me was the government actually let the monsters go, after promising they would if they defeated the alien. I wasn’t aware that promises like that were ever kept.
You can check it out on 3-D at Park Place Stadium 16, Baywalk and 3-D IMAX and Baywalk and Channelside.
Grade: C-
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