Spotty, uneven story leaves Monsters vs Aliens wanting

Rating: 6/10 (28 March 2009)

Okay, admit it; at some point, you've bought something based solely on how cool it looked on a commercial or ad, only to find out your diamond-in-the-rough purchase turned out to be a papier-mache disappointment.
That's the disappointing truth that is Dreamworks' "Monsters vs Aliens," Paramount's heavily hyped 3-D big screen adventuretoon that bears only a fractious resemblance to its title. And one would be well-advised to save your popcorn money and don't make the special effort to seek out a 3-D theater. In this offering, the net "dimension" is ultimately forgettable.
If you go into the theater expecting the movie advertised on countless TV spots and trailers, you'll be sorely disappointed, and the disappointment highlights Dreamworks' lost opportunity. Where the title suggests the possibility of a delightfully inventive story between legion carton monsters and otherworldly counterparts, it delivers a decidedly uneven montage of a story that bounces between outer space, suburbia, San Francisco, and a bizarre-but-explained-away military encampment. "M vs A" suffers the same identity problem as so many other similarly fractious films; poor execution from a poorly conceived story. The saddest part of all is that the clear potential of the film lay squarely in what its title promised, contrasted against what its creators ultimately delivered.
Although there are some cute bug-eyed monsters, with Seth Rogen's cycloptic Bob clearly the comedy star among them, they are relegated to background characters in the ultimate conflict around which the movie is drawn. Even the ultimate bad-guy alien isn't ultimately much of a character; he's merely a strawman bad guy for the hero (make that heroine) to battle. In the end, "Monsters vs Aliens" isn't about either; it reduces to a tired girl-power story that's been told better in Disney TV outings like "Kim Possible." "Monster vs Aliens" is not without its comic moments, but only in one-shot jokes, not from an underlying comedic theme that a strong film should aspire to provide. At our screening, the audience was quiet for conspicuously long spells between laughs. Moreover, the Dreamworks animation team still plays second-fiddle to the Disney-Pixar gold-standard, with lapses in continuity including sequences where it seemed some characters failed to maintain consistent size and proportion within the confines of their animated environment.
Unfortunately, the story suffers from the same problem - loss of continuity. There's at least one stretch early in the movie where one begins to ask if the projectionist accidentally switched to a different feature due to the sudden, lengthy, and tedious departure from the basic story. Sadly, the departure became the basis for the bulk of the rest of the film, while providing almost none of the laughs.
To be sure, there are sufficient moments for the kids to get their due share of giggles, but the 3-D moments are ultimately a why-bother. Sadly, much can be said of the rest of the movie. Ultimately, animation and 3-D tricks can't conceal the fundamental sin of a poorly conceived story.
If only "Monsters vs Aliens" had delivered a story representing even a pale shadow of its title.....if only...