Growing up in the 1960s and '70s, there wasn't anything better than a monster movie on TV or, better yet, in the movie theater. That is, except for those that featured more than one monster. While the creatures featured in "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" were my favorites, I had a soft spot for those wonderfully campy Toho Studio flicks featuring Godzilla battling any number of equally huge beasties.
The zenith of such films was "Destroy All Monsters!" the 1968 pic where the fire-breathing, radioactive "lizard" and friends (including former foes) teamed up to battle alien forces. That idea clearly serves as the genesis for "Monsters vs. Aliens," a computer-animated and (where available) 3-D extravaganza that's obviously a labor of love -- coupled with a desire to make big bucks -- for all of those involved.
With "Alien Trespass" set to follow this flick into theaters just a week after its release, we're suddenly inundated with a brief flurry of homage to campy sci-fi movies from more than half a century ago. Here, the filmmakers -- writer/director Rob Letterman and co-director Conrad Vernon along with writers Maya Forbes & Wallace Wolodarsky and Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger -- combine some of the Toho material (namely a 350 foot tall moth) with famous and lesser known American monster entries (including those inspired by "The Blob," "The Fly," "Creature From the Black Lagoon" and "Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman") and just about any flying saucer flick from the same era.
Much of the plot -- at least in the early goings -- stems from the notion of the latter film, where our heroine (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) is about to get hitched to her self-centered weatherman fiancé (Paul Rudd, not as much fun as usual in just voice mode here), but is then struck by a meteorite.
She quickly grows several stories tall, is abducted by the U.S. military (led by Kiefer Sutherland doing the appropriate vocal work of capturing cocky and bombastic officers of the time), and then put into service alongside other "monsters" -- including the mute moth Insectosaurus, the half ape-half fish man The Missing Link (Will Arnett), and the insect-headed Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie) -- to save Earth from alien invaders (actually just one, cloned over many times, and voiced by Rainn Wilson).
That's essentially it for the plot (which is appropriate, I suppose, since the predecessors didn't have anything more substantive), with lots of verbal and visual bits of homage to the aforementioned films as well as little bits of "E.T.," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and such. Other pop culture references are pretty much kept to a minimum, save for an unfortunate one related to a certain foot happy dance video game that feels out of place here and seemingly inserted just to give kids some connection to today's world.
While cute, lively, and rarely taking a breather, the rest of the material and related jokes aren't anything tremendous, as equal or greater amounts of attention obviously went into the film's look and those 3-D effects. As in most such recent efforts, the visual look is used more often for creating realistic depth than in having things popping out at you, but there are some such effective uses of the latter, including a paddle ball and some sort of circular alien rays emanating out from a towering alien robot probe.
The latter appears in a sequence that's the film's best, from an action and monster-based standpoint. After showing the President of the United States (Stephen Colbert, finally getting to play POTUS after his failed comedic run for occupying 1600 Penn. Ave.), a towering if decidedly retro robot crashes and smashes its way through downtown San Francisco that's deserted save for our plucky group of decidedly less than scary monsters.
The action terminates on The Golden Gate Bridge that, as in any "good" monster movie from long ago, ends up being destroyed in the process. It's a fun set piece both from a visual and engagement standpoint, but it unfortunately raises the bar too high for the rest of the film, including the big finale (onboard the alien craft, battling lots of clones of the pesky alien) that ends up coming off as surprisingly boring and repetitive, if clearly high energy.
While fairly easy to forget once it's over, "Monsters vs. Aliens" is nonetheless an enjoyable and amusing diversion that serves up some entertaining and occasionally funny bits of homage to old sci-fi, monster and alien invasion flicks from so long ago. And if you're going to see it, make sure you do so on the big screen so that you can experience the fun 3-D effects as fully intended. The movie rates as a 6 out of 10.
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