Animated Children’s Films: Monsters vs. Aliens: Animation Finds Girl Power

Note: This is adapted from a review I wrote on March 28, 2009, after seeing the movie when it first came out.

Although this was the fist movie to be fully produced in 3D, I didn’t see the 3-D/IMAX version. Nor had I seen the original, nor am I a dyed-in-the-wool animation fiend. A friend and I were just looking for a fun movie on a rainy afternoon. We were not disappointed, and neither were the kids filling the rest of the theater.

Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is about to marry her dream man, Derek (Paul Rudd), when the wedding is interrupted by a mysterious, quantonium-spewing meteor. The quantonium turns Susan into a giantess and she is whisked away to a secret government facility where monsters are kept. After being informed her name is now Ginormica, she is imprisoned with fellow monsters B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), Link (Will Arnett) and Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), despite her refusal to accept that she is really a “monster.” When the evil alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) attacks earth, however, the monsters are set free to save the world.

Dreamworks has a reputation for entertaining adults as well as kids (a la Shrek), and this movie is no exception. References to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and eighties music abound. Most surprisingly, there is lot of Dr. Strangelove here — you’ll be astounded at how much Kiefer Sutherland’s General W. R. Monger sounds like George C. Scott — as well as some modern political commentary (Stephen Colbert’s pro-war President Hathaway, for example). And of course, if you’re a monster movie fan, you’ll get all the references to The Blob, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and even The Thing.

The biggest innovation in this movie is its (fairly successful) attempt to be girl-friendly. After she saves San Francisco, Susan returns home to fine that her career-obsessed fiancé can’t handle the potential threat to his own fame and leaves her. Eventually, she decides that’s fine. Besides, she has other fish to fry: in the second half of the movie, Susan and the monsters must battle Gallaxhar on his spaceship, and through various quantonium-sucking plot machinations Susan is briefly returned to her normal size. Importantly, she chooses to suffer re-giantization in order to save her monster friends. Safely back on earth, Susan rejects Derek’s offer to take her back, which allows Susan to effectively dump him — deservedly, as he’s been revealed as self-obsessed coward and general louse.

Overall, I thought the movie successfully communicated that it was OK to be strong, independent, and even (gasp!) single. I liked that Susan was making her own choices, ones that didn’t revolve around getting a man, and that she saved the world herself rather than being saved. If I were feeling poetic, I might find a deeper meaning in her choice to be exceptional, but even if you don’t want to go that deep, the deliberate gender reversals in the movie (watch for the making out couple) are a nice Disney antidote. My only complaint is that Susan/Ginormica’s proportions veer a little towards the Barbie-ish, or at least super-model-ish –but even as a giantess, she’s still not as distorted as Disney’s cartoon women, and to be honest I’m more forgiving of animation than of airbrushed and distorted photos purporting to be real women.

It couldn’t have hurt that here was an award-winning woman screenwriter, Maya Forbes, involved. Amazing the difference that can make, although we could get ourselves into a tizzy by comparing the overall review percentages (hovering around 60ish) with those of, say, traditionally-oriented movies like Toy Story (batting 100, literally) — somehow, these newfangled non-traditional roles don’t seem to go over very well, whether they’re animated or not. But what can you do?

The supporting cast of monsters is just plain funny, as is to be expected with a talented cast like this one. Literally brainless but likeble B.O.B. must constantly be reminded who he is and how to breathe. The Missing Link is humorously macho, while Dr. Cockroach is an amusingly mad scientist. Rainn Wilson, too, gets a lot of chuckles from his evil alien role. These shenanigans keep the movie’s pace moving quickly between plot points. The animation is amazing, and so real at times that I have to wonder if little ones will be a freaked out by seeing San Francisco destroyed by a robot, since they won’t have the background to understand that this is a Godzilla commonplace. But perhaps I am out of touch with today’s kids. Other than that caveat, I highly recommend the movie for kids and parents alike, especially since it has an effective girl-power message.