Enjoyable retro sci-fi animation

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2013)

When a meteorite made of quantonium strikes Susan Murphy on the day of her wedding it doesn't kill her; it causes something strange to happen though... just as the service is getting underway she starts glowing slightly green then starts to grow. She doesn't stop growing till she is fifty feet tall! Understandably everybody flees in terror and the army turns up, tranquilises her and takes her to a secret facility where they keep monsters. These include Dr. Cockroach; BOB, a gelatinous blob; (Missing) Link, a strange fish/ape and Insectosaurus an enormous caterpillar like creature. It looks as if Susan will have to spend the rest of her life in captivity with these creatures until evil alien Gallaxhar sends a giant robot probe to Earth to recover the quantonium. The military is powerless to stop the robot so they use the monsters; they manage to defeat it but Gallaxhar realises that Susan has his quantonium so comes to Earth to recover it himself. If Earth is to survive his plans Susan and her monster friends will have to defeat Gallaxhar and his army of clones.
This Dreamworks animation has quite a lot going for it; the animation looks good, the characters are fun, the story is exciting enough without being too scary for younger viewers and the numerous references to older films are done in a way that people who haven't seen those films won't feel like they are missing a joke. The voice work was done well with none of the characters sounding overly cartoony. On the downside there are a few jokes which seemed out of place in a film aimed at children... do we really need a joke about the president soiling his trousers? I think not. The opening scene suggested that we were going to be reminded that this was filmed in 3D at every opportunity but thankfully that was the only moment that I thought was gratuitously 3D, which was good as I was watching on television. When compared to the works of Pixar or Dreamworks own 'How to Train Your Dragon' this looks distinctly second best; however it is still pretty good; it might not be essential viewing but it is well worth watching if you are a fan of animated films.