Dir. Rob Letterman & Cameron Vernon, Dreamworks, 2009Voice talent by Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Keifer Sutherland, etc.
It’s bad enough that Susan has just been struck by a meteor on the very day she’s set to marry her self-obsessed fiancé, but the situation worsens as radiation from the meteor causes her to grow to massive proportions, after which she finds herself re-christened ‘Ginormica’ by the US military and carted off to share cell-space with all the other ‘monsters’ rounded up over the past 50 years: a gelatinous mass named BOB, Dr. Cockroach (whose experiments have transformed him into a human/insect hybrid), the simian/amphibian Missing Link, and the Daikaiju-sized grub, Insectosaurus. Their shared captivity is short lived, however, after General W. R. Monger arrives to offer the group their freedom – in exchange for dealing with a slight ‘invading alien’ problem ...
Despite this movie being an animated sci-fi/adventure flick largely aimed at kids, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to review it on HorrorScope as there are numerous pop-culture references throughout to 1950’s horror flicks (such as The Fly, The Blob, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon), as well as to a multitude of more recent genre offerings.
In a nutshell, this is possibly the most perfectly entertaining movie – animated or otherwise – I’ve ever had the pleasure to see: funny, witty, intelligent, engrossing, and genuinely exciting, with various messages to convey (such as the importance of personal identity and empowerment, and the fact that even the most hilariously incompetent villain – or even, say, Head of State - can still be scary when in possession of sufficient power and technology). MvA never makes the mistake of talking down to its target audience, nor of alienating adults with childish humour (indeed, there are some jokes here that only adults will get). Even the 3D stereoscopic format (available at selected screenings) turned out to be magnificent: those crappy bi-coloured cardboard glasses of the past replaced by fitted plastic specs, allowing audiences to enjoy the movie without distraction.
One niggle: do US animation studios really think Australian audiences are so parochial that we need some local personality to re-voice characters for the local release of a movie? Tracy Grimshaw in Shark Tale, Mark Mitchell in Chicken Little, and now David Koch in MvA. Studios don't reshoot live-action actors for local releases, so why do it for animation? Or, if re-dubbing with an Aussie accent is deemed vital, perhaps try to place the re-voicing where it won't stand out like a big, red, sore, irritating thumb (in the case of MvA, giving an Aussie accent to a US TV news anchorman was probably not the best move).
That aside, Monsters vs Aliens is a brilliant movie. Go see it immediately, with or without your kids.
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