Monsters Vs. Aliens - Dreamworks First Foray Into 3D Animation

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3D movies have always left me cold.  Maybe my brain doesn’t work right (ok, ok, I know my brain doesn’t work right).  But the 3D never really “wows” me.  Everyone around me is gasping in amazement and trying to touch whatever it is that’s just been thrown at us but I just can’t get it work.  Sometimes, if I really try, I can see depth.  But stuff flying at me never works.  (For what it’s worth, I’ve never been able to see the hidden images in those Magic Eye puzzles either.) 

Which brings us to DreamWorks latest animated (ad)venture, Monsters Vs. Aliens 3D.  Reese Witherspoon voices Susan Murphy, a bride-to-be on her wedding day.  However, her ceremony is interrupted by a meteor.  It lands on her and its radiation causes her to grow to upwards of 50 feet.  She’s now a “monster” and the government, led by General W. R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) is called into corral her.  She is captured and whisked away to a secret government facility where we learn that the military has been incarcerating monsters for the last 60 years.

The feds give her the code name Ginormica (presumably because the WE Network has trademarked the word “Bridezilla”).  She quickly forms a friendship with Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), The Missing Link (Will Arnett) and B.O.B (Seth Rogen).  Dr. Cockroach is mad scientist type that’s been morphed into a human cockroach via a teleporting incident (think The Fly).  The Missing Link is half-ape/half-fish/half-man (pardon my math, I went to public school).  And B.O.B. is food-additive experiment gone awry that is reminiscent of The Blob.

They are destined to a life of imprisonment until, as luck would have it, there’s an alien invasion.  Galaxhar (Rainn Wilson) is bent on destroying Earth in order to get some chemical or something.  It doesn’t really matter, does it?  The President (Stephen Colbert) is forced to release the monsters in an effort to thwart the aliens.

Monsters Vs. Aliens is a cute movie.  It’s a fun concept and there are some laughs.  But ultimately, it feels more clever than funny.  It was built for spectacle.  It’s a huge 3D adventure; I mean...monsters are fighting aliens for God’s sake.  But what should have been a wham-bang over-the-top action somehow feels restrained.  I have to wonder if future generations (most likely watching this in 2D on DVD) will wonder what all the fuss was about. 

It’s as if the animation is so intent on creating a sense of realism that they forgot we go to these things in order to escape the real world.  Like so many DreamWorks animated films, the whole thing feels like it’s one script revision away from being something really special.  The fact that it got so close can be really frustrating. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Kung Fu Panda and 1 being Shrek The Third, Monsters Vs. Aliens gets a 7.

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