Shoulda, coulda, woulda been better - but settled for mediocrity

Rating: 6/10 (27 October 2010)

Monsters Vs Aliens is the latest Dreamworks Animation effort, they have been on the improve over the years but are still light years behind Pixar in terms of quality and consistency. No shame there I guess, (so is every other production company), but DA sometimes are guilty of the "name actor" and pop culture references being more important than stories.
Monsters Vs Aliens – The Plot in 23 seconds – A meteor hits Earth, (specifically hits a chick named Susan minutes prior to her wedding), Susan is imbued with "Quantinium" (doesn't matter what it is) and immediately grows 45 ft taller with super powers. Galaxar (an alien) wants the Quantinium and decides to attack Earth using an army of his clones to get it back. Earth decides to combat the Aliens with da-da-da-da-da-daaaaa Monsters! that they have accumulated over the past 50 years.
Included in the Monster's squad are Susan, now known as Ginormica and basically a white haired replica of Elastigirl/Mrs Incredible, a gelatinous blob named BOB, a fishy looking thing (apparently the missing link) called Link, a maniacal genius called Dr. Cockroach due to an experiment gone wrong and finally a giant bug called, you guessed it "Insecto".
There are really only two fights between Monster and Alien, a few jokes and a couple of pop culture references, though refreshingly less than normal, but not much more than that.
You'd think rather than being P.O.'d Susan would be happy to have an excuse to buy an entire new wardrobe! Sure she's 50 odd ft tall but men always notice tall women and there aren't many 4 ft 11 inch models running around?
The 9 minutes of credits should mean Dreamworks tried to make this a classic, and I wanted to like it, I really did. The fact is that I laughed three times in the entire 80 minutes (sans credits), all because of, or at the expense of BOB (without details, BOB is stupid and has no memory). 1/ How the others cheat at cards and Bob is none the wiser. 2/ Bob tries to crack onto a jelly plate. 3/ How he acts when he is unaware he is about to die.
Before you cry SPOILER!, it is a G rated movie, you know no-one dies.
Where they it all went wrong:
Not a big deal, but Susan is constantly disproportionate, without harping in one scene she knocks a power pole over with her shin, later on the power poles are head-high. Also Bob is at times around 2 ft tall, then later seems 6 ft in size in relation to Susan. The characters also seem to have no weight when they fall, land or even walk around.
The character designs seem half-arsed, (more on this later) and the designs seem more like prototypes than fully-fleshed creations.
Dreamworks did limit the pop culture references in this one, I hate PCR as they both date the film, and short sell the value of jokes by using the work of others to almost create "enjoyment by acknowledgment". (For the record: Dance-Dance Revolution, Axel-F, Roller-blading).
After the credits rolled my first thoughts were that I didn't really like any character, including BOB, who was the token likable character, I also thought that from a marketing perspective MVA would make crap toys if I wanted to buy a present for my son.
Boring characters + crap toys = Sequel suicide. Even "Cars", which wasn't that flash, is getting a sequel, because car-toys sell!
I think somewhere in this review I am expected to say that the animation is "amazing" and "groundbreaking", but it really isn't if you've seen anything since "Toy Story 2″ or "Monster's Inc". The fact that it is in 3D is irrelevant and is more a marketing ploy in my view.
Final Ranking – 6.5 / 10. A rental if you have kids, not much for anyone else.
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