Review: Monsters vs Aliens. Minor spoilers
A recent accusation of being Morrisonesque in my disappointment with _Avatar_ has encouraged me to talk up movies that I see and enjoy, in addition to those I loathe. So here's one.
Monsters vs. Aliens: I believe this is a Pixar film. But Wiki tells me it's Dreamworks. It's rated PG, and I don't watch a lot of PG films not because I need to hear a lot of obscenity and see violence, but because I suspect they're all going to be sort of bland and vapid, for kids. I hear people talk up how clever some kids' movies are, with jokes inserted for parents' pleasure that kids would never get, like they used to do with Bugs Bunny cartoons. Nevertheless this prejudice guides me: I haven't seen Wall-E; I haven't seen UP!
But I saw MvA, probably because the ads made it look pretty funny and because it had a superheroes/ sci fi plot. It was pretty awesome, with a few flaws.
While there's nothing new under the sun, MvA combined a couple of themes that work pretty well for me.
One was the notion that super-beings are regarded by society as fearsome freaks rather than heroes and are shunned by people who knew them and locked up by the US government (not entirely original; this is the core plotline of the X-men comics). There's definitely a note of originality here: they didn't just reach into the box and pull out a generic super-team made up of Strong Guy, Fast Guy, Guy with lasers/lightning/fire, Invisible/Stealthy guy. They're all legitimate freaks whose super-abilities are honestly overshadowed by their monstrousness (contrast with the X-men, most of whom ask you to accept a plotline of "woe is me; I'm a tragic hero and nobody likes me because in addition to being beautiful, smart, mentally healthy, and in superb physical shape, I can bend steel bars with my mind. Why me, God?").
Another theme is "Aliens have landed with hostile intent and Earth must repel them", which has been done so many times that you run the risk of being cliche. As in _Mars Attacks_, the designers gave the aliens a fairly "classic" feel (big heads, tentacles, invulnerable ground-walker). It seems to me if you're going to do this old plotline, you either have to make it clear that you're doing an homage to _War of the Worlds_, or you have to add a truly original element (like they do in _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_) or you'll end up with something that feels like a repaint of every other alien invasion movie ever (like _Independence Day_).
As the trope dictates, conventional military force is useless against the aliens, leaving the government no choice but to unleash its monsters (always termed monsters, never superheroes) against the invaders.
Here's what I thought was good about the movie:
Comedy. I laughed out loud a lot during this movie. Comic relief mostly rests upon Seth Rogen as Bob the brainless blue blob, but most of the characters have their moments.
It was honestly hard to predict. I made a couple of obvious guesses as to where the film was going and was wrong. One of them was that the US Army would turn out to be at least as big a bad as the aliens and they don't. You can't blame me for guessing this way -- they named the general W.R. Monger, for Christ's sake. A second guess I made was about the lead character, Susan/Ginormica's fiancee. From early on, you get the feeling that he's going to be revealed that he's a jerk, and he is, but as I tried to predict their inevitable break-up scene I asked Nancy "What color do you think his new girlfriend's hair will be?" (Susan starts off as a brunette, so Nancy guessed blonde for the replacement girl and I guessed red). In so doing I was guessing that this movie would reinforce, as Hollywood so often does, that a woman's ultimate fulfillment is to be #1 in the eyes of her chosen man. What the jerk fiancee actually says during the break up scene (with no new girl) is way more thought-provoking than that. I kind of want to spoil it; let's see where this review goes. Anyway, this leads me to a third strong element, without which I wouldn't have bothered to write a review.
MvA has a really strong women's empowerment message that isn't so preachy that it ever makes you say to yourself "Okay, now the plot is now on hold for a lecture on feminism." A lot of it revolves around the jerk fiancee and the hypocrisy with which he describes what sounds like a fairly equitable relationship between himself and Susan. I have decided not to spoil the demise of that relationship so that it'll be fun when you see it. I will spoil this for you, though: guess which guy Susan ends up with? Nobody. She doesn't declare herself liberated from men (which would probably have been preachy); her romantic fulfillment just isn't important enough for them to do what my literature degrees insist I call the Genealogical Imperative at the end of this movie. Compare this to every other movie in which the culmination of the "dumped by jerk" plotline is "finds better guy". Not only is this the plot of every romantic comedy I've ever seen (which, granted, is mercifully few), but even in fairly progressive sci-fi with strong female characters, like _Firefly_, the viewer clearly knew which female character is the intended mate of each male character (OK, not River, whose craziness gets in the way).
Look at females in children's movies, superheroics, and alien attacks. In alien attacks, women are damsels to be protected; it was true in _Mars Needs Women_ (1968) and it was true in _Independence Day_ (1996). In superheroics, they might "empower" a woman by allowing her to bench press an aircraft carrier but they're still going to put her in a short skirt and high heeled boots, draw enormous tits on her and call her "girl". In children's movies -- like I said, I haven't been watching a lot of children's movies lately but if they ever moved away from "Some Day my Prince will Come", I haven't gotten the memo. Even more active heroines than Cinderella tend to do stories where they "win" by getting the right guy. Pocohantas does this. Doesn't even Mulan do this? So Monsters vs Aliens definitely wins the "Show this to your Daughters" award from me.
Bad Things: I like villains. Rainn Wilson (Dwight from _The Office_) voices the lead villain and in his first few scenes he is utterly lackluster. Eventually he does do some good gags but all too often the writers fail to make him funny, threatening, or even memorable. Or maybe Rainn isn't that amusing unless he's portraying Dwight. Either way, the bad guy needed more personality.
All the notable characters are voiced by big celebrities. Casting Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Southerland in this movie must have made it WAY more expensive to make than if they had just used professional voice actors (granted, they probably made their money back in Witherspoon fan ticket sales). I doubt very seriously if most of these celebrities are truly better voice actors than professional voice actors are (since film actors train to use their bodies and facial expressions). It also had Nancy and me playing "which celebrity voice is that?" during the film, a game at which Nancy rules and I drools. The fact that we were playing the game decreased our immersion. If you paint a tree, you want the audience to say "awesome tree", not "I wonder what brand of paint he used to get this lovely bark color?" Similarly, most filmmakers would say that a movie is successful when the audience is thinking about the characters, not the actors; about the dialogue, not about the script. Probably the worst instance of this in MvA is that they cast Stephen Colbert as the President of the United States. I think Colbert is hilarious, but Colbert's scenes were plainly Colbert doing Colbert's TV character. They were funny but seemed like cut-aways to a mini-Colbert Show.
To be honest, one reason I liked this film so much more than I liked Avatar was that my preconception of this movie was that it was going to be child's fare, as devoid of stimulation for my brain as Lick'm'Stiks would be for my palate. On the other hand, Avatar's hype was that it was a sci-fi epic with a message; it was not specifically targeted to children (it had realistic violence, sex). Because MvA exceeded my expectations and Avatar vastly undershot them, I'm writing about my reactions and am really not able to perceive the goodness of the films in a vacuum.
MvA also avoided the rampant racism of Avatar (underlying message: a white man is better at being an Indian than the Indians are) but in a manner that I really can't stand up and cheer for: there simply weren't any non-white characters in MvA. I think it's forgivable in MvA because there are so few human characters.
Anyway, this is what it looks like when I am really impressed by a movie.
Monsters vs. Aliens: I believe this is a Pixar film. But Wiki tells me it's Dreamworks. It's rated PG, and I don't watch a lot of PG films not because I need to hear a lot of obscenity and see violence, but because I suspect they're all going to be sort of bland and vapid, for kids. I hear people talk up how clever some kids' movies are, with jokes inserted for parents' pleasure that kids would never get, like they used to do with Bugs Bunny cartoons. Nevertheless this prejudice guides me: I haven't seen Wall-E; I haven't seen UP!
But I saw MvA, probably because the ads made it look pretty funny and because it had a superheroes/ sci fi plot. It was pretty awesome, with a few flaws.
While there's nothing new under the sun, MvA combined a couple of themes that work pretty well for me.
One was the notion that super-beings are regarded by society as fearsome freaks rather than heroes and are shunned by people who knew them and locked up by the US government (not entirely original; this is the core plotline of the X-men comics). There's definitely a note of originality here: they didn't just reach into the box and pull out a generic super-team made up of Strong Guy, Fast Guy, Guy with lasers/lightning/fire, Invisible/Stealthy guy. They're all legitimate freaks whose super-abilities are honestly overshadowed by their monstrousness (contrast with the X-men, most of whom ask you to accept a plotline of "woe is me; I'm a tragic hero and nobody likes me because in addition to being beautiful, smart, mentally healthy, and in superb physical shape, I can bend steel bars with my mind. Why me, God?").
Another theme is "Aliens have landed with hostile intent and Earth must repel them", which has been done so many times that you run the risk of being cliche. As in _Mars Attacks_, the designers gave the aliens a fairly "classic" feel (big heads, tentacles, invulnerable ground-walker). It seems to me if you're going to do this old plotline, you either have to make it clear that you're doing an homage to _War of the Worlds_, or you have to add a truly original element (like they do in _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_) or you'll end up with something that feels like a repaint of every other alien invasion movie ever (like _Independence Day_).
As the trope dictates, conventional military force is useless against the aliens, leaving the government no choice but to unleash its monsters (always termed monsters, never superheroes) against the invaders.
Here's what I thought was good about the movie:
Comedy. I laughed out loud a lot during this movie. Comic relief mostly rests upon Seth Rogen as Bob the brainless blue blob, but most of the characters have their moments.
It was honestly hard to predict. I made a couple of obvious guesses as to where the film was going and was wrong. One of them was that the US Army would turn out to be at least as big a bad as the aliens and they don't. You can't blame me for guessing this way -- they named the general W.R. Monger, for Christ's sake. A second guess I made was about the lead character, Susan/Ginormica's fiancee. From early on, you get the feeling that he's going to be revealed that he's a jerk, and he is, but as I tried to predict their inevitable break-up scene I asked Nancy "What color do you think his new girlfriend's hair will be?" (Susan starts off as a brunette, so Nancy guessed blonde for the replacement girl and I guessed red). In so doing I was guessing that this movie would reinforce, as Hollywood so often does, that a woman's ultimate fulfillment is to be #1 in the eyes of her chosen man. What the jerk fiancee actually says during the break up scene (with no new girl) is way more thought-provoking than that. I kind of want to spoil it; let's see where this review goes. Anyway, this leads me to a third strong element, without which I wouldn't have bothered to write a review.
MvA has a really strong women's empowerment message that isn't so preachy that it ever makes you say to yourself "Okay, now the plot is now on hold for a lecture on feminism." A lot of it revolves around the jerk fiancee and the hypocrisy with which he describes what sounds like a fairly equitable relationship between himself and Susan. I have decided not to spoil the demise of that relationship so that it'll be fun when you see it. I will spoil this for you, though: guess which guy Susan ends up with? Nobody. She doesn't declare herself liberated from men (which would probably have been preachy); her romantic fulfillment just isn't important enough for them to do what my literature degrees insist I call the Genealogical Imperative at the end of this movie. Compare this to every other movie in which the culmination of the "dumped by jerk" plotline is "finds better guy". Not only is this the plot of every romantic comedy I've ever seen (which, granted, is mercifully few), but even in fairly progressive sci-fi with strong female characters, like _Firefly_, the viewer clearly knew which female character is the intended mate of each male character (OK, not River, whose craziness gets in the way).
Look at females in children's movies, superheroics, and alien attacks. In alien attacks, women are damsels to be protected; it was true in _Mars Needs Women_ (1968) and it was true in _Independence Day_ (1996). In superheroics, they might "empower" a woman by allowing her to bench press an aircraft carrier but they're still going to put her in a short skirt and high heeled boots, draw enormous tits on her and call her "girl". In children's movies -- like I said, I haven't been watching a lot of children's movies lately but if they ever moved away from "Some Day my Prince will Come", I haven't gotten the memo. Even more active heroines than Cinderella tend to do stories where they "win" by getting the right guy. Pocohantas does this. Doesn't even Mulan do this? So Monsters vs Aliens definitely wins the "Show this to your Daughters" award from me.
Bad Things: I like villains. Rainn Wilson (Dwight from _The Office_) voices the lead villain and in his first few scenes he is utterly lackluster. Eventually he does do some good gags but all too often the writers fail to make him funny, threatening, or even memorable. Or maybe Rainn isn't that amusing unless he's portraying Dwight. Either way, the bad guy needed more personality.
All the notable characters are voiced by big celebrities. Casting Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Southerland in this movie must have made it WAY more expensive to make than if they had just used professional voice actors (granted, they probably made their money back in Witherspoon fan ticket sales). I doubt very seriously if most of these celebrities are truly better voice actors than professional voice actors are (since film actors train to use their bodies and facial expressions). It also had Nancy and me playing "which celebrity voice is that?" during the film, a game at which Nancy rules and I drools. The fact that we were playing the game decreased our immersion. If you paint a tree, you want the audience to say "awesome tree", not "I wonder what brand of paint he used to get this lovely bark color?" Similarly, most filmmakers would say that a movie is successful when the audience is thinking about the characters, not the actors; about the dialogue, not about the script. Probably the worst instance of this in MvA is that they cast Stephen Colbert as the President of the United States. I think Colbert is hilarious, but Colbert's scenes were plainly Colbert doing Colbert's TV character. They were funny but seemed like cut-aways to a mini-Colbert Show.
To be honest, one reason I liked this film so much more than I liked Avatar was that my preconception of this movie was that it was going to be child's fare, as devoid of stimulation for my brain as Lick'm'Stiks would be for my palate. On the other hand, Avatar's hype was that it was a sci-fi epic with a message; it was not specifically targeted to children (it had realistic violence, sex). Because MvA exceeded my expectations and Avatar vastly undershot them, I'm writing about my reactions and am really not able to perceive the goodness of the films in a vacuum.
MvA also avoided the rampant racism of Avatar (underlying message: a white man is better at being an Indian than the Indians are) but in a manner that I really can't stand up and cheer for: there simply weren't any non-white characters in MvA. I think it's forgivable in MvA because there are so few human characters.
Anyway, this is what it looks like when I am really impressed by a movie.