Nerd Mentality

REVIEW: Monsters vs. Aliens 3-D

Posted April 3rd 2009 by Adrian DeHerrera.

It's really unfair that Pixar has set the bar so high for the animation industry with its moving stories, excellent voice work and attention to detail. Sure, Cars wasn't really the shiniest gem in Pixar's crown, but there's more brilliance in that film alone than in a gunny sack full of Space Chimps, Madagascars and Shark Tales. The award-winning animation studio has forced rival studios to either make better quality products or, like DreamWorks/Paramount and their spring hit Monsters vs. Aliens, get in on the snazzy new 3-D technologies that may just take the industry by storm.

Packed in a theater full of families, I was a lone geek in a sea full of yammering kids and parents. I usually stay as far away as possible from loud, annoying movie patrons (read: yammering kids and parents) as I prefer my cinema experience to be silent and pristine. Since seating in our theater was tight, the couple next to me had to yell to their kids who were seated in different rows. The shouting itself was also completely in Spanish so you can imagine how glad I was to know my movie going experience would be excruciating and multicultural. Olè!

To my amazement, the chatter subsided as the movie began, replaced with a smattering of astonished "oohs" and "aahs" as everyone stared at the screen. Though it cost an extra $3.50, I had decided to take the digital 3-D showing and it was totally worth the price. The colors were crisp, the screen was bright, and the definition was fantastic. Sadly, the flimsy paper glasses with blue and red lenses (worn to movies like Jaws 3-D) have been replaced with a pair of huge, dark gray glasses. You still look like a dork while wearing them, but they definitely brought much more to Monsters vs. Aliens than I had expected.

Getting back to the film, Susan Murphy (played saccharine-sweetly by Reese Witherspoon), dreams of the day she'll marry her handsome TV weatherman fiancé so she can ride his coattails of success and smile at him vacantly as the years of child rearing and domestic chores slowly drain her life away. To her chagrin, Susan's dreams are dashed to bits when a flaming meteor lands on her, infusing her with "quantonium", a space energy that causes her to grow 49 feet 11 inches tall. Against her will, Susan (now codenamed "Ginormica") is whisked away to a secret government facility which houses other god-forsaken abominations like herself.

Eventually, an alien attack on the United States prompts the government to form a team of monsters to combat the threat, which includes sassy, fun-loving versions of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mothra, the Fly and the Blob. The U.S. President, amusingly voiced by Stephen Colbert, deploys the monsters in hopes of saving the world against an invasion. This leads to a whole lot of slapstick fighting, buildings exploding, lessons in friendship, yadda, yadda, yadda...

Here's the deal: there's not much you haven't seen before and most of what happens you can see coming from a billion light years away. The monsters (who fortunately do have heart and a delicious B-movie vibe) are a plucky band of misfits fighting a bumbling alien menace.  The star-studded cast (which includes actors like Kiefer Sutherland,  Seth Rogan and Hugh Laurie), does a good job at punching up an average script, but something is missing.  There's an adventurous score, A-list talent and tons of action, but sadly, this movie is about as deep as a mud puddle.

For example, there's a montage which gives a glimpse of each monster's history, but it's woefully brief and the audience is left to wonder who these creatures really are.  Why should we care about them? Why do they care about humans who have them forcibly stuffed in prison cells? Who could be afraid of a semi-retarded blue blob of goo whose specialty is being fat and dumb?  It's like the writers had a perfect opportunity to show the world interesting aspects of America's coolest sci-fi monsters, and turned them into huggable g-rated bores.

On the other hand, I was impressed as to how awesome the 3-D is - and what it's going to mean in the future for other films. With a $58 million weekend box office debut, you can be assured studios are going to be submitting more and more movies with an optional 3-D viewing. I admit, I was blown away by the film's visuals, especially during action scenes where the third dimension creates a much more visceral feel; once my eyes got adjusted to what was happening on the screen, I was immediately immersed in the animated world. You have to simply see it for yourself to understand the exhilaration of the experience.

In the future, what directors have to be careful about is not to warp the wonder of the technology by pulling a George Lucas and making the film all about the tech versus focusing effort on crafting characters and a story that people care about. In Monsters vs. Aliens there are forced parts where it's obvious the animators created gags and scenes around the technology, but it's not overused, which I very much appreciated.

In the end, this isn't the stuff of Pixar. No tears were shed and I wouldn't see the film again. I could appreciate the spoofing of '50s-style monster flicks, but the plot was just a rehash of family-friendly fluff we've seen a thousand times before. Adults may want to catch a matinee for the 3-D novelty, but this flick is destined to be tossed in a gunny sack with other run-of-the-mill CG adventures.

Tags: Monsters, Aliens, CG, 3D, 3-D

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