Friday, March 27 DreamWorks Animation and Paramount Pictures presents “Monsters vs. Aliens.” Also shown in 3-D, this is the first film to be produced in real 3-D instead of being converted afterwards, which added $15 million dollars to the film’s budget.
The movie begins with a close-up of an animated, yet surprisingly realistic, cheeseburger in an office that keeps watch for UFO’s. The control room comes to life as an enormous meteor heads for earth.
Unaware of the incoming space rock, Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) prepares for her wedding to the egotistical news-anchor hopeful Derik Dietl (Paul Rudd). However, just as Susan heads towards the church, the meteor slams to earth and she receives a giant blast of quantonium, the most powerful chemical in the universe. By the time she reaches the altar, Susan grows to 49-feet-11 inches.
The ceremony screeches to a halt and the government, led by the President Hathaway (Stephen Colbert), captures Susan (still Murphy) and sends her to a super top-secret institutional facility which houses monsters. Here she befriends the other inmates, who convince her they will never be released.
The posse includes former world’s smartest man, now world’s smartest cockroach due to an experiment gone awry, Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (ironically voiced by Hugh Laurie who stars as Dr. House in the Fox hit TV show “House”), B.O.B., an indestructible blue gelatinous blob with no brain played by funny man Seth Rogen, an out of shape 20,000 year old fish-ape, The Missing Link (Will Arnett) and Insectosauras, an enormous grub with extremely powerful mucus.
As soon as Susan finally understands she has received a life sentence, General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) unleashes Team Monster to fight Gallaxhar (Rain Wilson), an alien invading earth to retrieve Susan’s supply of quantonium.
As the monsters fight Gallaxhar, Susan, a.k.a. Ginormica, comes to embrace her new strength and finally faces the facts that her ex-fiancé is completely self-absorbed. Placing great value on her new friendships, she keeps cool under pressure and is always careful to keep others’ best interests in mind.
“Monsters vs. Aliens” keeps viewers entertained with a perfect combination of action and humor. The star-studded cast creates well-developed and distinct characters that keep the audience cracking up even in the midst of a crumbling Golden Gate Bridge and an attacking army of alien clones.
