Friday evening, my friends and I were in the mood for something particularly fun and lighthearted, requiring little in the way of brain power, and available at Redbox. It seems that Monsters vs. Aliens, the recent film from DreamWorks directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon, came out just in time to satiate our movie craving.
Before Monsters vs. Aliens arrived on DVD and Blu-ray, theaters released it in 3-D. I didn’t pay the money to view it there, because the advertising never hooked me, although the previews I saw were fairly entertaining. Naturally, I didn’t expect to enjoy the movie as much as I did. It had the whole group in stitches, and not infrequently.
The story begins with pretty bride-elect, Susan, who is hit by a meteorite on her wedding day and made into a truly towering bridezilla. The government locks her away with a cadre of fellow monsters, soon summoned to rescue humanity from alien bad-guy Gallaxhar. The team then proceeds to win the hearts of earth-dwellers with its world-saving antics.
First, let me say that Monsters vs. Aliens is not at all what I expected from an animated kids movie. On the scale from kid to adult, it falls somewhere in between Disney/Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. and DreamWorks’s Shrek. This is not due to any questionable content, a la frequent innuendos in Shrek, but to jokes that would simply fly over children's heads.
What makes the movie so surprisingly funny is that it is replete with pop-culture references, each one spot-on. Characters deliver jokes with both taste and precision. Monsters vs. Aliens takes an already talented voice cast, including Reese Witherspoon and Seth Rogen, and throws some unexpected treasures into the mix. For example, comedian Stephen Colbert voices the hopelessly idiotic president of the United States, shown repeatedly confusing a pair of matching red buttons, one of which “launches all of our nuclear missiles” (the other makes lattes). My personal favorite is 24's Kiefer Sutherland, whose famous television bad-assery only lends to the hilarity of his husky southern twang for single-minded military man General W.R. Monger.
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