ARCHIVES for The Media Magnate:  2009, 2010.
 
2009 Film Review - Monsters VS Aliens
 
April 9, 2009
By Eric M. Scharf
 
I have been a big fan of the traditional monster movies ever since I was a young boy, and when I heard that a film entitled “Monsters VS Aliens” (MVA) was coming to theaters, I literally said, “WOW! Hold the phone! That is the greatest title for what should be the biggest battle royal ever!”

I simultaneously learned that it was going to be a DreamWorks 3D-animated film with bright colors and cute, strange creatures, which instantly indicated a much younger audience. I was not let down, and I just ratcheted down my expectations to something less than Alien VS Predator.

To be clear, I have been appalled by the silver screen garbage that is the Alien VS Predator series. I loved Alien 1 and Aliens, and I enjoyed Alien 3 out of respect for Sigourney Weaver. I also loved the macho-fest known as Predator. All related films after those have turned my stomach. But I digress . . .

When I think of “Monsters VS Aliens,” I think of something epic or awe-inspiring, as would most monster movie fans. What I received for my $9.00 ticket price was an enjoyable film but not the great film for which I had hoped. There were high expectations for this film, with the likes of Shrek and Kung Fu Panda as older siblings within DreamWorks’ still-young stable of animated properties.

The story was cute, simple, and even tame at certain points. The one weakness that I could not quite ignore was that the film really encompassed a cute collection of continuity-breaking moments rather than a complete story.

A perfect example of this involves the scene where the President inadvertently attempts to procure some life-threatening refreshment. While in the war room with his cabinet and military advisers, he reaches for a big red button on a nearby wall, but he is stopped cold by shouting advisers. That button would have launched the country’s entire nuclear arsenal. He shrugs and inquires as to which button he must push to get a latte. He is told to push the other identical big red button. He pushes the button, serves himself a latte, and asks his team which idiot designed such a setup. He is told that he, himself, did it. The President, then, tells his advisers to fire somebody for such a screw-up.

The scene was cute for but a “moment” and otherwise unnecessary and useless. MVA is not the first film to make this mistake, and it will not be the last, either.

Such a promising film premise with such a segmenting and strangling story weakness can only be described by the Genie from Disney’s “Aladdin” as “Phenomenal cosmic powers in an itty-bitty living space.”

I am not entirely convinced these moments were used like so many available mice to plug holes in a Swiss cheese story. I just believe the co-directors, Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon, chose to give the multitude of talented actors attached to the film a chance to share the big stage.

This film, like most high-dollar animated flicks these days, has plenty of the biggest and hottest actors providing voice talent, with the memorable ones being:

Ginormica, otherwise known as Susan, is voiced by Reese Witherspoon.
Derek Dietl is voiced by Paul Rudd.
B.O.B. is voiced by Seth Rogen.
General W.R. Monger is voiced by Kiefer Sutherland.
Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. is voiced by Hugh Laurie.
President Hathaway is voiced by Stephen Colbert.
The Missing Link is voiced by Will Arnett, mildly reminiscent of Cliffy from Cheers.
Gallaxhar is voiced by Rainn Wilson.
The news reporter at the probe crash site, voiced by Ed Helms, sounds very much like Tom Brokaw.

So, there was plenty of temptation for the directors to break the story up into well-coordinated, talent-touting snippets rather than a smooth story from beginning to end.

The film centers on Susan Murphy, a California girl going about the innocent business of preparing to wed her dreamy fiancé, Derek Dietl, the toast of the Modesto area news reporting scene. Everything is going according to plan, and she simply could not be happier.

Her wedding day elation takes a pretty big dent when Derek informs her that they are going to an even better place than Paris for their honeymoon: Fresno! After a brief let-down, and a not-so-subtle reminder that this detour will help his career, Susan jumps on board the Good Ship Dietl and is back to being thrilled to marry her dream boat. She seems shackled to blind devotion by a minor inferiority complex; just enough for Derek to remain a self-centered glory hound.

Shortly thereafter, the greatest moment of her life finally arrives: Susan is hit by a meteorite the size of a single-family home! This is, however, no ordinary potato-shaped intergalactic boulder. While it should flatten Susan against the ground like so many ripe and juicy tomatoes, it transforms her into quite the opposite. The meteorite is juiced with a rare and powerful ingredient, called Quantonium, which causes her to grow 50-stories tall, gives her incredible strength, and, most noticeably, turns her hair a brilliant bright white.

Not surprisingly, the government responds immediately to this non-FEMA event by capturing Susan, transporting her with an impressive-looking oversized personnel carrier aircraft (think C5 Galaxy-VTOL hybrid), and depositing her into a secret prison-like military facility used to house other similarly-odd creatures who later become her teammates in what begins to resemble the old TV series “Monster Squad.”

 
The somber mood and sterility of the following scene, where she was abruptly introduced to her “cellmates,” had me half-expecting to see Dr. Helen Magnus, from SCIFI Channel’s “Sanctuary” television series, walk up to Susan, welcoming her to her new home, where Magnus “tracks, protects and learns from the extraordinary and paranormal creatures that inhabit our world.”

Susan’s extraordinary teammates include a varied cast of characters:

Dr. Cockroach. He is a mad scientist, with an approach very similar to Doc Brown from “Back to the Future,” who accidentally transformed himself into a roach-human hybrid. While his experiments mostly tend to backfire, it is not for a lack of kind-hearted yet mad intentions.

B.O.B. He is an indestructible, gelatinous, brainless mass. B.O.B.’s lack of a brain causes him to suffer from some ridiculous memory problems. He has a tendency to “sample” almost everything in his given environment by swallowing them through his conveniently empty head and expelling them through his mouth. When those “things” include humans, B.O.B. also tends to forget to spit them out fast enough to prevent their own potential brain damage from lack of oxygen. Nonetheless, this process allows B.O.B. to temporarily inherit the memories of the swallowed person, which makes for several embarrassing moments for B.O.B.’s “victims,” as he cannot keep those memories to himself.

The Missing Link. He is a top-heavy lizard man in the mold of a kinder, gentler, more fun-loving “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” He is constantly worrying about “being able to perform” in public after so many years hidden away in the team’s secret military bungalow. He is particularly close and protective of the largest member of the gang.

Insectosaurus – an enormous, prehistoric, insect-dinosaur crossbreed the size of a modern Olympic stadium. Insectosaurus proves to be the biggest teddy bear known to humankind, but he is also the biggest mouth-breather of our time. And, as humungous as he may be, screaming humans scare him to half to death.

“Calling All Monsters,” indeed.

While character development, however, has never been a strong point of monster movies, character discovery, or more specifically, self-discovery of one’s special abilities, might have greatly enhanced the presence of this likeable team of oddballs.

Susan, for example, could have discovered that she could, in fact, grow larger and stronger than a 50-story tall person, but only within a limited time frame, as the Quantonium in her physical make-up would need time to reconstitute itself (e.g. the Dilithium crystals, in the USS Starship Enterprise, when pushed beyond capacity through warp speed travel, would need time to regenerate before the ship could travel at that speed again).

The Missing Link, for example, could have discovered that he is much faster and stronger than he remembered, after being out of commission for so many years. This would add weight to his concerns about still being as capable as he used to be, and it would give credence to his belief that, in the good ole’ days, he was much better than he fears he has become.
 
Dr. Cockroach, for example, could have discovered that his transformation into a roach-human hybrid also produced the armor-like shell that most roach characters tend to display in stories filmgoers to which filmgoers have been treated.  The roach sidekick, in Pixar's "WALL•E," gets steamrolled twice, to great effect, only to be seen popping back up as if nothing happened. Roaches, in reality, are seen as the only creatures that can survive almost anything, and this added characterization would have made Dr. Cockroach much more than the mildly annoying talking head he literally appears to be during most of his scenes.

Insectosaurus, however, is a special case, because most adults who see MVA will comprehend Insectosaurus as the giant joke he was meant to be, or “the huge creature with no weight,” who only comes in handy towards the end of the film. I would have certainly preferred that Insectosaurus, too, had something extra-special to him.

My thoughts on self-discovery of powers remind me of the story effort put into Pixar’s “The Incredibles,” one of my favorite 3D-animated films of all time. “The Incredibles” was interwoven with self-discovery by characters who were learning how to use their super powers on-the-fly, much like Susan, but also much younger in age.
 
Nonetheless, while Susan and her new friends are becoming familiar with each other back at their secret lair (including whacky and unsuccessful attempts by Dr. Cockroach to return Susan to normal), we learn that big trouble is brewing outside of our solar system and speeding towards Earth. The entity responsible for the meteorite that changed Susan’s life, interstellar conqueror Gallaxhar, sends a robot probe to Earth in an attempt to recapture his precious Quantonium. If that is not troubling enough, Gallaxhar also has four eyes, literally, and the two outside eyes are in constant sea-sickness-inducing motion, making it seem like he is a walking pendulum.

 
The initial battle, involving the U.S. military, offers blatant but enjoyable mimicry of the great warfare scenes from “Independence Day.” Nonetheless, the military provides no such deterrent to the massive one-eyed robot probe, and the monsters are called in to bat cleanup.

Susan, now-renamed Ginormica by the military, in tandem with Insectosaurus, uses her incredible strength to stop the menacing robot probe. This scene, in fact, is a perfect example of the amazing grasp of size and scale held by the film crew. Insectosaurus standing on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from the equally enormous robot probe, with the smaller Ginormica and plenty of cars and ant-sized humans between them, is spectacular.

 
After learning of his failed bid to reacquire the Quantonium, Gallaxhar decides to take care of business himself, arriving on Earth and informing the human population that he intends to take over and enslave everyone – no hard feelings.

President Hathaway does the only thing he can, as he guarantees the monsters their freedom in return for stopping Gallaxhar’s diabolical plan and saving the world.

Ginormica and her teammates do, indeed, decide to take on Gallaxhar and his army of dozens of robot probes and hundreds of Gallaxhar clones. Once, again, the military’s ultra-cool personnel carrier aircraft is called into duty to transport the team to their destination, and, once, again, it is only for a brief “moment,” after which it is damaged beyond repair and crashes. While the X-Men’s super cool aircraft was destroyed in an instant after almost zero use in X-Men 3, it is still my humble opinion that impressive aircraft / spacecraft command more than a moment of attention. Then, again, like Insectosaurus, a fantastic mode of transportation with very little usage, while unpopular, is understandable.
 
The team escapes their doomed aircraft, and, after another “moment” involving General W.R. Monger, they just manage to make it onboard Gallaxhar’s enormous spacecraft. Ginormica literally looks normal-sized in comparison to it. Ginormica quickly encounters Gallaxhar, and, once he determines that Ginormica is not easily dispatched, a heart-pounding chase ensues. Gallaxhar stays just ahead of her grasp until he manages to capture her. She awakens in an hourglass-like containment area wearing a skin-tight jumpsuit only TRON could love. The only things missing from it were glowing neon blue rhinestones.
 
Nonetheless, Gallaxhar manages to recollect the Quantonium from her body without harming her, to which I was simultaneously impressed and disappointed. Expectations of a monster movie fan had me wanting to see Gallaxhar extract a pound of flesh for his trouble, and, yet, it was refreshing to see such an all powerful villain use a passive technical method to attain the element of his desire.

Ginormica’s teammates come to the rescue only to be stopped rather easily by Gallaxhar. Ginormica aggressively pursues Gallaxhar into his escape pod chamber, where his precious Quantonium is being loaded. She understands the only chance she has to save her friends and stop Gallaxhar is to break the containment field around the Quantonium, allowing it to engulf her once more, and regaining her former powers. She knows she will never be able to return to being normal again, but she has no choice, with her teammates in need . . . and no normal life to which she can return (as proven by her disastrous reunion with her parents and their neighbors).

Ginormica ends up halting Gallaxhar’s mad scheme, freeing her teammates (her friends), and hitching a ride on Insectosaurus’s back, who flies in on his new wings (after awakening from a cocoon after his bruising encounter with the first robot probe), just in time to validate his larger-than-life existence, and just as Gallaxhar’s ship self-destructs.  His massive spacecraft, by the way, is not the most creative design anyone has ever seen, and it looks similar to one of those Polycom conference call devices that are used through the corporate world.

 
And, thus, Ginormica and her teammates end up being set free – not free to return to the “normal” lives they once knew – but free to see where their brighter future will take them.

It is human nature to want something you see or experience, or with which you interact, to be “what you want.” You want all of your meals to taste great, your vehicle to drive like a silky smooth race car, your clothes to make you look like a film star every time you put them on. Films of all kinds, all genres, and all grades are going to have fans for some of the most common and outlandish reasons.

I enjoyed this film about how a common person went through an unexpected transformation, joining an outlandish team just in time to save the world from destruction, and learning to appreciate her own self worth a little more in the process. I simply would have enjoyed it as much as my 5-year-old daughter, or even more, if the directors had take more than a "moment" to better address my age-old love for monsters and aliens . . . and what they would do to each other if they really mixed it up on the battlefield.

Now that the first attempt at MVA has been made, however, the cat is out of the bag. There will be more attempts to better satisfy my childhood monster movie dreams, and I plan on seeing each and every one of them.

“In 300 years, when evil returns, so shall we.” – The Mondoshawan in “The 5th Element.”

“In the next 5-10 years, when another, greatly improved MVA effort returns to theaters, so shall I.” – Eric M. Scharf in “A Wishful Thought” (Working Title).