Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

Directed by: Rob Letterman, Conrad Vernon | 94 minutes | animation, action, adventure, comedy, family, science fiction | Original voice cast: Seth Rogen, Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Paul Rudd, Kiefer Sutherland, Rainn Wilson, Will Arnett, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel | Dutch voice cast: Lieke van Lexmond, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Johnny Kraaykamp Jr., Rogier Komproe, Frans Limburg, Chris Tates, Bart Oomen, Mark van Eeuwen

‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ opens with a shot of a hamburger on a table, which looks so horribly more real than real, that it will knock your style back. That bodes well, in terms of appearance. A promise that is absolutely kept. The detail of people’s skin, for example, especially Susan, is incredibly well done, with all the hues and blemishes that entails. Fabrics, furs and other materials also make a stunning impression. But with film it works just like with computer games: the design is also important, but the addictive effect, read: the emotional impression it makes and whether it ‘gets’ you, is much more important and depends on so many more factors. Games like Tetris and Pacman were exciting and addictive thanks to simple ingenuity. In film, for example, it depends on nice characters and a good (running) story. And that’s where it comes in in this film.

The basic idea is quite nice, but the execution is so sloppy and most jokes are too mature. It seems the creators have grossly overplayed their hand. A hobby project that got out of hand by movie fans (it contains many references to existing classics, such as ‘ET’, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ ) who had more eye for details than for the big picture, results in a film that wants too much and goes too fast and that the ‘normal’ audience seems to forget.

Everything has to be fast in Hollywood. The characters are introduced in a minimum of time, as well as their ‘problem’ and the first obstacles that appear as quickly as possible. In science fiction you often need some extra time or resources to get used to the ‘rules’ of the new world. In animation, the narrators can afford a little more and if there is a lot of humor involved, even more. Only these narrators make it very colorful. The viewer barely sits in his chair when the whole thing is already upside down and the girl, who is accidentally made bigger, is immediately arrested and taken away, as if the government already knew she would get that big (which is not). so is). Later in the story too, time and habituation barriers are rolled over, not to mention weak solutions in the fight against the culprits, which take all the tension out of the story, and are not made up for by really funny jokes.

Where Dreamworks scored with ‘Shrek’ and delivered simple but effective formula films with films like ‘Kung Fu Panda’, they show a lesser side here. Not a smart script, but a weakly developed story with mediocre jokes. Excellently designed and with some nice quotes, but otherwise empty to the bottom. It is precisely these makers, themselves fans of old-fashioned sci-fi and the like, who should have understood: the films they refer to owe their strength to well-thought-out stories and compelling characters. Design comes after that. Does he come first, as in ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ seems the case, then it can degenerate into a misguided diversion that only tries to disguise how mediocre everything else is.