Review of Monsters vs Aliens (2009) by Rachel H — 13 Mar 2011

I personally think Monsters vs Aliens is one of Dreamworks most underrated films and quite possibly one of the most underrated animated movies of all time. Why do I think this is underrated? Because it's freakin' fun and one of the best times I have ever had at the theatre. Before How To Train Your Dragon came along this was probably my favourite Dreamworks movie, and its still my second favourite to date. As Mel Brooks once said, "You have to love the thing you're parodying" and MVA loves it indefinitely, providing us with some clever parody-based humour and great jokes that entertained the adults in the theatre as well as the kids.

Monsters vs Aliens is about Susan Murphy, who gets hit by a meteor on her wedding day and turns into the 50 ft tall Ginormica. She is promptly imprisoned at Area 51 where she meets all sorts of crazy monsters. There's Insectosaurus, The Missing Link, Dr. Cockroach, and B.O.B, who are all wonderful, memorable characters. Their prison sentence is expired when the government needs them to fight a giant robot sent by an alien ship to extract the quantonium in Susan's body. This brings up the dilemma of defeating the alien and saving the city, as well as Susan facing not living a normal life.

The film has great memorable characters voiced by a fantastic voice cast. This movie is also different because it has a female main character with male sidekicks, whereas not a lot of movies do that nowadays. The male sidekicks are much more fun and much more funny than Susan herself, but that doesn't make her any less entertaining and likeable as a protagonist. The film also has a very funny villain and funny supporting characters, including Kiefer Sutherland as W.R. Monger and Stephen Colbert as the President. That being said, the film has a fantastic voice cast and they all play their parts wonderfully, especially the main monsters and the villain. The main monsters are voiced by:

Susan- Reese Witherspoon.

Link- Will Arnett.

B.O.B- Seth Rogen.

And Dr. Cockroach- Hugh Laurie.

They are all fantastic in their roles and so is Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar, the villain. However, that's all that can be said for the voicework and the characterization, so I'll move on. The movie is hilarious and entertaining from beginning to end and it will entertain adults as well as children. It is certainly made for children, but if you are a parent and your child asks you if you can rent this movie, you won't have to cringe in fear. In fact, if you grew up watching stuff like Mystery Science Theatre, you'll love it because even though I didn't, I got most of the references.

This was also the first movie I saw in 3D, and it actually had some very impressive usage of the technology. I am not totally against 3D, by the way. I think that it can be done right, but most of the time it isn't. However, this film made great usage of 3D and I actually saw it twice in 3D. Even without 3D, the animation was spectacular and some of the best that Dreamworks has ever done.

This film was just terribly entertaining, and I think that it is very underappreciated and should be watched more often. I am not totally against Dreamworks even though they have produced some less than spectacular titles. However, their new projects look promising and I really love this one, being my second favourite to date. I would definitely give my recommendation and say that this is a great rental for a rainy day.