mars attacks and shaun of the dead: in mars attacks, tim burton wanted to make an homage to the bad sci-fi movies of the fifties and ended up with a bad sci-fi movie. shaun of the dead wanted to pay parodic homage to the zombie genre and succeeded not only in that, but made a legitimately good zombie movie in the process. monsters vs. aliens falls hard and flat into the first category, and does so under the assumption that, if they knowingly do it, it's not actually a bad choice.sorry, dreamworks.
the credits list a promising line-up of talent: reese witherspoon, keifer sutherland, hugh laurie, will arnet, rainn wilson, seth rogan, and stephen colbert at the president. some very good talent there, comedic and dramatic. animation has begun to draw larger and larger pools of talent, amassing numbers of a-list actors rivaling the casts of a robert altman or p.t. anderson film. however, studios seem to think that the actors' casting alone will turn their straw into gold. pixar, on the other hand, uses tim allen and creates an iconic character for generations (i told myself i wasn't going to bring up pixar, and i will do my best to hold to that.) seth rogan as b.o.b. the blog was the sole stand-out with nearly all the best lines. i once heard a suggestion that, when you're auditioning for voice work, use your own voice; there are plenty of people who can do silly voices, yours is unique. i love the jack bauer voice as much as anyone, yet keifer sutherland played the generic army general in a way that sounded very similar to jim varney (ernest goes to camp, etc...). by the way, the general's name is w.r. monger. get it?
an enormous alien pod lands on earth and, before long, the army has surrounded it and the president himself has arrived. he marches up a very tall wooden staircase to a musical keyboard at the very top and proceeds to plunk out the five-note harmony from close encounters of the third kind. the only people who have not seen/heard a "close encounters" parody countless times already are those who are too young to have seen the movie and thus will not get the joke. when that sequence of notes yields no response from the extraterrestrial, the president then try's "axel's theme" from beverly hills cop, and plays it with unreserved flair. why? i'm really not sure, and i don't think the movie knows, either.
perhaps i should recap the plot and introduce the characters, but the movie is called "monsters vs. aliens", and that really does sum up the plot. so much of it made no sense to the point that i got the feeling the writers excused themselves by saying "it's a monster movie- who cares why?" if i'm in the back row watching a double-feature starring ann francis, i don't care. but when i'm paying the same amount that i'll pay to see up in two months, then you'd best put some effort into why things happen in the script. why did susan wander in dejected aimlessness down a dirt road to a gas station and, suddenly, all of her monster friends were there? i'm ok with the government having a top secret futuristic base, but everything was seemed custom-made for the 49-and-a-half-foot tall susan, even though she was accidentally mutated just yesterday. why did the war room look just like the war room from dr. strangelove? because taking an obvious idea is easier than coming up with your own.
one of the five credited writers is wally wolodarsky, a name i know from simpsons commentaries. mr. wolodarsky was a creative force at the simpsons during their golden age, when their wit, humor, and insight established themselves as a clear candidate as the best tv show ever. i can't help but remember that, during this time, the simpsons parodied both close encounters and dr. strangelove successfully. here, wolodarsky hopes that we'll love the same concepts a second time and 15 years later. (meanwhile, jim reardon, a similar simpsons alum, was up for a screenwriting oscar at another animation company for a movie whose bed sheets i own).
i did laugh throughout the movie. from the start to the end, there were some laughs. chuckles, really. as i mentioned earlier, b.o.b. the indestructible blob has most of the best lines. totally clueless characters are funny, it's a as simple as that. i liked gentle giant that was insectasaurus, and i liked the two big red buttons gag for a moment. but the rest of the movie felt like a "tiny toons" episode, full of jokes that are predictable but get a laugh from fifth graders (and in fifth grade, i laughed a lot at "tiny toons").
good idea: clone guard mistaking b.o.b. to be another guard and mindlessly handing him a gun. after a beat, b.o.b. realizes he has the gun and shoots the clone guard. -->funny.
bad idea: dr. cockroach then takes the gun from b.o.b., declaring that he needs to be careful with such things and the gun goes off again. -->not funny.
and this is how the movie goes. while shrek (from the same studio) was amazing at taking all the conventions of genres playing with them, monsters v. aliens follows them like a toy race track. i would see a joke being set and would await the same sort of genre-convention-breaking, post-modern gag. sorry, the humor is as pre-modern as the style.
while moments of the plot were inexplicable, most of it was predictable. the other side of the writing coin toss was "it's a sci-fi monster movie- that's what happens in those movies." nothing surprised me; there were no twists or surprises. i've heard that watching a bad movie can be educational, as you can learn what not to do, although i usually find myself thinking, "i don't know what they should have done differently." this time, however, i actually did have several ideas: spend more time here, cut that, etc. i also began composing this review, deciding to take joel's suggestion and start a movie review blog, and thought of several non-disney/pixar animated movies i would rather be watching (bolt and shrek 2, to start.) the dialogue was as generic as the monster designs, so that, like the jokes, i would see where it was going and anticipate the twist. this was only a reassurance at the end, when everything seemed to be wrapping up. another movie may have brought on a "you only thought it was over" moment. thankfully, when the movie seemed to be over, it actually was.give yourself $11 and watch the incredibles again. (there, i said it.)
