Movie review: Monsters vs. Aliens

by John P. Meyer

Director Rob Letterman (of Shark Tale) returns to the family-friendly animated feature forefront with his second movie for DreamWorks, Monsters vs. Aliens. This never-a-dull-moment, laugh-a-minute movie looks great on a big 2D screen, so I'm betting the 3D version will really knock one's socks off. What you've got here is basically all the action, adventure and camaraderie of Star Wars without all that tiresome attendant sturm und drang.

Monsters vs. Aliens proves to be as much of a hoot for old codgers with fond memories of '50s sci fi flicks as it is for the wee chilluns who wouldn't know Mothra from the Man in the Moon. That's because so many of those great and riotously cheesy classics are referenced in the script, imagery and characters.

The reverential references actually extend right up into the recent past, with one scene involving a jet fighter missile attack on an alien craft bearing a strong storyboard resemblance to a similar scene from Independence Day. And then there's the Close Encounters musical interlude and a creature design nod to Mars Attacks!.

Reese Witherspoon voices the lead character, a plucky lass named Susan Murphy (soon to be a.k.a. Ginormica), who is betrothed to an egotistical jerk-wad of a newsman named Derek (Paul Rudd). Thanks to a close encounter with a fallen meteorite (not the only reference to The Blob - stay tuned), Susan suddenly takes on the aspect of a person of greater stature than she's heretofore been accustomed to: about 45 feet greater, actually. (Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, anyone?)

With a tip of the hat to hoarier work (Gulliver's Travels), Susan is taken down by ropes launched overhead by a corps of troops who have appeared on site to investigate the fallen space rock.

When she wakes, Susan finds herself the captive of a gung-ho, jet-belt piloting general named W. R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland, practically unrecognizable in his gruffness. Not to mention his barrel-chested, animated persona). And she's far from alone in her vast underground military holding facility - she is, in fact, one of its more mundane-appearing denizens. (Even if she does look outstanding in her Big Tex-sized and - um - remarkably form-fitting jumpsuit.) That's because her fellow internees include a lab-coated chap with the head of a cockroach (Hugh Laurie, as Dr. Cockroach); a lizardman referred to as The Missing Link (Will Arnett); a blob of protoplasm with a demonstrable lack of brain matter named B.O.B. (Seth Rogen); and - most alarmingly - a truly monstrous-sized beetle with a voice like a foghorn on nitrous named Insectosaurus.

Out to get the meteorite (and then Susan, who turns out to have absorbed its powerful "quantonium" essence) is an alien from outer space named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson), whose ego is perhaps even vastier than that of Susan's fiancee. Gallaxhar first sends a robotic minion to obtain the quantonium, and then later decides to take matters into his own two hands. (Make that eight tentacles.)

I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of additional plot points because you'll have more fun seeing them play out before you in all their beautifully-rendered, cleverly-orchestrated and amusingly-scripted glory, but I would be remiss in not noting that Stephen Colbert gets to play the President of the United States. Or voice him, anyway.

Which must have given that patriotic demagogue a great deal of satisfaction.

WARNING: don't leave before the closing credits, or you'll miss President Hathaway's finest hour.