The Review of Monsters vs Aliens

A reasonably brief intro:
Monsters vs Aliens is a 3D animated film that represents DreamWorks Animation’s latest effort in their on-going battle with Disney’s Pixar animation studios. And as the title suggests, the film is, from an Insectosaurus’ point of view, about Monsters versus an Alien who is bent on invading Earth. If you don’t already know, you’ll find out what an Insectosaurus is when you watch the show.

The story revolves around Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon), who gets hit by a meteorite on her wedding day to her weatherman husband-to-be, Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd). She absorbs a substance called Quantonium from the meteorite that causes her to grow into a giant. Unfortunately for her, her rapid growth happened inside the church she was to have her wedding in. (We’re quite puzzled as to how her undergarments seemed to enlarge and fit her now giant frame).

The military then arrives, led by General W.R Monger (Kiefer Sutherland), abducts her, calls her “Ginormica” and imprisons her with 4 other captured monsters;
Dr. Cockroach the mad scientist cockroach (Hugh Laurie),
Missing Link the fish-ape monster (Will Arnett),
B.O.B the brainless gelatinous blob (Seth Rogen),
and Insectosaurus the incredibly huge grub.

Galaxhar the octopus-like alien (Rainn Wilson), fueled by his greed for quantonium, traces the substance to Earth and decides to invade Earth to get it.

The dimwitted and obnoxious U.S President Hathaway (Stephen Colbert), after recognizing the threat, takes General W.R Monger’s advice to use the monsters to fight Galaxhar… Setting up a Monsters + Humans vs Aliens scenario of comedic proportions.

What we liked…
The characters in the show, especially B.O.B, effectively gave the film its unique sense of humour, whiles all 4 of the monsters’ personalities were so starkly contrasting that they shared good chemistry.

Adding to that, President Hathaway, although slightly slapstick in his jokes, still served up a handful of laugh-till-you-tear moments and there is not a single character in the show that didn’t have a sense of humour!

The voice talents behind the film did a really good job in bringing each character to life and the animators should be given a pat on the back as well. Their creations just begged to be turned into soft toys and placed in Toy Store shelves, which is sure to happen in time.

Some of the jokes took a stab at US politics that would have made an impact on the more mature audience. (Not sure if the younger crowd would get it though)

Although we didn’t watch it in 3D, there has been feedback that made us regret not doing so because the quality of animation even in non-3D was really good.

What we didn’t like too much…
Nothing much really…
The film was made for one thing only, which was to make us laugh, and it did that job quite well although it did lack the same sort of character depth like Toy Story or The Incredibles.

Some of the funny moments, were slightly too slapstick and made it seem as if the writers were trying a bit too hard with the jokes.

So…
Considering that this is in fact a cartoon, or in modern terms, an animation, there really isn’t much to be critical about. As mentioned earlier, it did what it was supposed to do quite well and it lived up to its title.

Our rating.
7.5 / 10