Review of Planet 51 (2009) by Chads — 21 Nov 2009

It's the hubris of man, or rather, the hubris of an American man, who would have the gall to ask Lem(Justin Long) if he's considered "good-looking" among his kind. The astronaut can't tell.

The inference being, none too subtly, that Captain Baker(Dwayne Johnson) deems the young "alien" ugly. Prior to his landing, mankind was rendered in cheesy sci-fi films as a single giant eye, an appropriate metaphor for the narcissism of the homonymic "I"(the astronaut).

Dissimilar from "The Eye of the Beholder"(a 1960 "Twilight Zone" episode written by Rod Serling himself), in which a beautiful woman, whose cosmetic surgery goes awry, is considered hideous by the standards of an otherworldly culture, the human species remain the standard bearer of beauty(the astronaut calls them "sea monkeys") in "Planet 51", despite the context where being tall and Caucasian might be hideous to the short and green.

Captain Baker lands not only on another planet, but in another era, as the film documents the moment on our own planet when the hangover of the fifties, still felt, arguably, as late as 1964, finally dissipated, due to the rumblings of an oncoming conflict in Vietnam.

There's no war in "Planet 51", but there are peace activists(and a protest singer), who insist that the visitor is friendly. The presence of these proto-hippies suggest "The War of the Worlds" in reverse could happen, an odd fit for a film that doggedly rehashes "E.

T.". Well, maybe it might. After all, these planetary denizens wanted to dissect the astronaut's brain. Without any back-up, what choice does Captain Baker have, but to hug Lem like Henry Thomas, as in the finale of the 1982 Steven Spielberg classic.

He'll be back and give those misplaced protestors something to protest about.