Monsters Vs Aliens, Exeter Odeon
Cert PG, 94 minutes
By Graham Taylor
Dreamworks Animation studios have yet to set a foot wrong with their films. They’ve had huge box office successes such as Shrek and critically lauded kids’ flicks like Wallace and Gromit – their newest addition looks set to be just as big.
Monsters Vs Aliens revolves around Susan Murphy (voiced by Reese Witherspoon, an inspired choice), who is about to marry the man of her dreams, weather man, Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd).
As she reflects on the forthcoming ceremony, she sees a meteorite hurtling towards the earth from a distant planet. Susan runs for her life, but is hit by the massive piece of rock, and she blacks out.
When found by her mother, Susan is hurried off to her ceremony, only to be told by her fiancée that she’s glowing. As she sees her hand glowing a bright green, she starts to grow, until she breaks the Church, at a massive height of 49ft 11in. She tries to calm everyone down but the government are alerted to what’s happened, and they capture Susan at her wedding reception.
Susan is locked in a huge prison cell. When she is taken to a huge dining area, the poor young thing meets other ‘monsters’ like herself.
There’s the Missing Link (Will Arnett), a fish like man who’s 1000 years old, and was captured after visiting his old lake; BOB (Seth Rogen), a jelly like blob, made from tomato and blue topping dessert and chemicals; Dr Cockroach PhD (Hugh Laurie), a human who transformed himself into a cockroach to survive humanity, and Insectosauras, a huge bug like fluffy thing that was made by a failed experiment.
Freaked out by her fellow prisoners, Susan tries to escape, but is stopped by General WR Monger (Keifer Sutherland), the leader of an operation that captures Monsters to stop the public from discovering their existence, and scaring everyone to death. He shows Susan around the facility, whilst informing her she won’t be allowed home, and her name has been changed to Ginormica (rather aptly, really.)
As Susan willows in self-pity, a small, tentacled villain named Galaxhar (Rainn Wilson) decides to destroy all life forms on earth and make it his own planet, after discovering that a meteorite containing the most powerful energy in the universe has crash landed on earth. He sends a huge robot to destroy the life forms, and get the young girl with the meteor power.
When the Government discover the alien has arrived on earth, the President of the USA (a brilliant Stephen Cobarlt) decides to heroically intervene with the robot’s plan. As the President tries to make peace with the Robot (in some stupid but hysterical ways) the Robot attacks, and the President valiantly tries to shoot it. When the army can’t defeat it, they send in the monsters to try and defeat it.
Soon, Galaxhar tires of hiding away, and makes himself known. As the team are sent to destroy him, with a promise of their freedom, Galaxhar sets about making clones of himself, preparing to destroy earth.
The monsters are unhappy though, as people are afraid of them, and Susan discovers Derek isn’t the special one she thought he was. However, this doesn’t stop their quest to stop Galaxhar, but many problems cause trouble. Will the team save earth?
It’s obvious what’s going to happen, but that’s the fun of this film – how do they make the bits in between of the beginning and end funny and unpredictable? Luckily, like Pixar Studios, Dreamworks know how to make a sharp, witty and funny story. The middle is easily the best part of the film, as we see how Susan and her new friends interact and try to overcome the obstacles of people’s fears over the Monsters.
The voice casting is fantastic, and are all great choices. The main leads are brilliant choices, particularly the lead aliens. Witherspoon’s sweet and chirpy voice lifts the character of Susan, making the character more believable and fun. Arnett, Laurie and Rogen are all great choices. I was surprised when Laurie was chosen to play Dr Cockroach, but he was a good choice. The humans are well cast too. Cobarlt and Sutherland are both surprising, as they have comic humor despite their hard as nails roles in TV shows.
The music is great . It’s your average kids flick music, just slightly more adult, which is certainly something that could be said of the whole film. This certainly can be enjoyed by adults. The use of pianos in the depressing scenes and the deep bass and drums is used for the action scenes, which is effectual, albeit predictable.
The film looks fantastic, and the costs show that a lot of time and effort has been put into this film. It looks brilliant in 3D, so I would advise you to see those screenings if you get the chance.
To sum up, March exits with a bang, giving another fantastic, funny and sharp animation. 2009 gives yet another fantastic movie to watch again and again.