'Monsters vs. Aliens' Movie Trailers and Reviews

Monsters vs. Aliens

Starring: Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Hugh Laurie, Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Rainn Wilson, Will Arnett

Director: Rob Letterman, Conrad Vernon

Release Date: March 27th, 2009
Release Date: 3rd April, 2009

Studio: DreamWorks Animation

Synopsis: When a meteorite from outer space hits a young California girl named Susan Murphy and turns her into a giant monster, she is taken to a secret government compound where she meets a ragtag group of monsters also rounded up over the years. As a last resort, under the guidance of General W.R. Monger, on a desperate order from The President, the motley crew of Monsters is called into action to combat the aliens and save the world from imminent destruction!

Movie Trailers

Monsters vs. Aliens Theatrical Trailer

Official ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ Movie Website

Movie Reviews

Movie Review by Todd Murphy

Rating – 7.5/10

BOTTOM LINE: Clever, witty, fun and looking glorious in 3-D, “Monsters Vs Aliens” is a solid CG-animated flick which both kids and adults should enjoy, even though it lacks a knockout punch.

THE GOOD: Nine times out of ten, a CG-animated movie is more often than not great and one can only speculate that the reason for this stems from the fact that so many years of time and effort are spent making them. Pixar is the studio that makes the AA-grade CG films, but Dreamworks Animation is close behind and with “Monsters Vs Aliens”, the company has shown its ability to deliver a good quality film, even though it is not quite up to Pixar’s lofty standards. As the title would suggest, aliens come to earth to take over the planet and it is up to a group of monsters who have been locked up in the top secret military base Area 51 to take them on. The film is full of great one-liners and colourful characters, least of which being the monsters themselves. Both B.O.B. and Insectosaurus stand out as being the funniest, the former with his lack of brain and subsequent comedic banter and the latter for his sheer size masking a cute benign personality.

There are a lot of human characters in this story, led by Susan (aka Ginormica) who becomes a super-strong giant after a radioactive meteorite lands on top of her on her wedding day. The US President is particularly funny, especially when he starts playing the Beverley Hills Cop theme (or for the new generation, the Crazy Frog tune) as a means of communication with the aliens in a nice rip-off of “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind”. Where this film differentiates itself from others of its type is its execution in digital 3D which is nothing short of astounding. The pictures and effects are so clear, colourful and vibrant that you feel like you are in the movie itself and unlike IMAX, it is not overwhelming. The future of 3D is really in this type of film and hopefully this trend will continue in to the future. “Monsters Vs Aliens” is a good, fun film with some stunning visuals and colourful characters making for an enjoyable experience.

THE BAD: It may be harsh to say this film does not quite reach the heights of its genre, but with so many great CG-animated films made, this description cannot be avoided. “Monsters Vs Aliens” is good, but it does not match the quality of films like “Finding Nemo” or “Wall-E” from Pixar. The reason for this is largely due to a lack of punch and lethargy in the story telling. Despite being a short ninety minutes, the first twenty or so go by a little too slowly without much to grab your interest; most of this is spent setting up Susan’s character and while it is important to the way the rest of the film plays out, it is also a little boring. Also, given the comedic nature of the main monster characters, it is a shame that more was not done to exploit this, leaving parts of the film a bit flat in execution. As a result of these factors, the film lacks a knockout punch that would have made it memorable which is a shame because the core concept is fantastic and its rendering in 3D is marvellous.

Read More Movie Reviews at AllAboutMovies.net

Movie Review by Marty Meltz

Quality – 6 out of 10

Dazzling action for the kids, easy plot to follow, appealing monsters. Frankly, though, except for the sexy 50-foot tall heroine of Barbie-like proportions and the longest legs in the known universe, nothing really much for adults.

She’s some cutie, built for anything except all-male action, but she somehow can mash and smash with the best. Her monster cohorts are, as with hero or heroine’s helpers in all such films, of low self-esteem badly needing to be told (this stuff just never stops in today’s animation characters) that they are really and truly beings of strong skills and talents and should stride forth to assert themselves to command their place in the world.

The film’s action motif is high-ratcheted stuff, with every motive apparently directed to very short attention spans. The scale is kept grand, the goals simple. The general concept imagination level is not impressive. Dialogue is primarily for the tots, with just a few gratuitous references at adult level. One gets the distinct sense that at the scripting level, nobody really tried very hard at this.

California girl Susan Murphy (voice of Reese Witherspoon) is minding her own business getting married to TV weatherman Derek (voice: Paul Rudd) when all of a sudden she’s almost demolished by a meteor that’s full of weird energy from space. Very soon, Susan finds herself to be 49-feet-11-inches tall. As to her flimsy wedding dress — back off, boys — that’s politically corrected so that it grows with her.

Worse, now comes the military who’s actually been rounding up monsters for many years. They throw her onto a special compound reserved for her kind. Also locked up are B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a one-eyed blue glob who doesn’t care what or who it devours; the Missing Link (Will Arnett), a weird amphibian; Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), a small scientist with a bug’s head; and Insectosaurus, a hideous larva who’s seven times taller than Susan.

They’ll become the MonSquad, liberated to face the baddie invading monsters and their gargantuan robot. The aliens had shown absolutely no inclination to reciprocate the U.S. President’s (Stephen Colbert) friendly advances. General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) of the U.S. military will direct the monster heroes.

But even with the robot destroyed and vanquished, Susan and her crew will now have to face its inventor, the villainous four-eyed squid Galaxhar (Rainn Wilson) who arrives on his scary-looking spaceship realizing that if you want to take over Earth, you really have to do the job yourself. He is perfectly capable of producing an unlimited army of clones. This calls for a mighty pooling of talents by the superstar monsters.

So you get to see the colossus combatants tromping through San Francisco to face each other at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Interesting is that although there’s a world of destruction going on, nobody anywhere is hurt. This is not untypical in modern-day adventure cartoon scenarios, featuring lots of situations replete with violence, but the violence itself is not satirized. That is, the victims are never, as in real action adventure, shown mauled, mutilated or even seriously harmed. Note the comparison with the old-time cartoons in which a cartoon character, as in the Road Runner series, got crushed and exploded, then in the next scene there he was none the worse for wear. In these modern times, such lampooning would no doubt miss the kids’ sense of humor as world violence is now entirely real.

Anyway, this film could have used some smart talk and inventive action.