It's Monsters vs. Aliens and Everybody Wins!

Every once in a while a movie comes along that just allows you to turn your brain off and have a really good time. That sounds like the opening to a million movie trailers but it definitely applies to Monsters Vs. Aliens. It is very early in the spring and summer movie season for 2009 but Dreamworks has already hit a home run with this wonderful movie with this very capable follow up to last summer’s animated smash hit Kung Fu Panda.

As with Kung Fu Panda, Dreamworks has once again established that they know how to put together a cast of actors to make an animated movie come to life. Reese Witherspoon is perfect as the female lead with the generic name of Susan Murphy, and her male counterpart Paul Rudd plays the male lead of Derek with a sense of minimalism that allows the jokes made at Derek’s expense to be funny and appropriate. We never learn enough about Derek to really like him, but we learn just enough to hate him completely.

Seth Rogen who plays Bob the Blob, Hugh Laurie who plays Dr. Cockroach, and Will Arnett who plays the Missing Link otherwise known simply as Link, play the monsters in the story. The chemistry between the three speaking monsters makes for some hilarious moments, and Link’s undying friendship to the 400 foot tall Insecto has moments where it tugs at the heart strings. Stephen Colbert lends his talent as the hapless President Hathaway, and he has more than one line that you will be quoting for some time to come.

Monsters Vs. Aliens is an animated feature so of course much of the action seems a bit over done and hard to understand at times. There are important plot moments that are very difficult to take, but by the time you get to those moments you have already been so thoroughly entertained that you just let a lot of it go through. There are even some nods to the old Godzilla movies that can make a science fiction fan’s heart race a little.

In the end Monsters Vs. Aliens has a little something for everyone in the audience. Even the scenes that had the potential to be scary to small children are so expertly crafted to not be too scary that they become incredibly funny. The over the top characterizations helped the comedic element of the movie, as it was very obvious from the start that this movie was designed to be a parody of the old monster movies of the 1950’s. Aside from some plot holes you could drive a truck through, Monsters Vs. Aliens is well worth the hype and definitely a movie that the whole family should see this summer.

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