The Screengrab : hugh laurie

Screengrab Review: Monsters vs. Aliens

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

At the 3-D screening of Monsters vs. Aliens I attended, there was a collective gasp from the children in the audience when the first image seemingly launched off the screen at us, and a cynical, “It took five people to write that?” from an adult behind me when the end credits finally rolled. My own opinion fell somewhere between those two reactions.

While generally more broad and less well-written than a typical Pixar film, the gang at DreamWorks Animation (under the direction of Conrad Vernon and Rob Letterman) gives good visual in their latest, with everything from spaceships to red rubber paddle balls zooming towards (and, in correctly equipped theaters, beyond) the screen, as well as a series of cleverly conceived and executed action sequences: one, involving an epic battle on and around the Golden Gate Bridge, is especially breath-taking.

The story and characters, meanwhile, don’t go a lot deeper than the high-concept title: Reese Witherspoon voices a young bride-to-be named Susan, who transforms into a 50-ish foot woman called Ginormica after getting hit by a mysterious meteorite on her wedding day.

“Ginormica,” in fact, is the name assigned to Susan after she’s captured by a secret government agency tasked with containing the world’s creepiest creatures, including a brainless blob (Seth Rogen), a fish-ape (or possibly ape-fish) “missing link” (Will Arnett), a Brundlefly-esque amalgam of mad scientist and cockroach (Hugh Laurie) and Insectosaurus (Jimmy Kimmel), a giant Mothra-style insect several times larger than even Ginormica (and whose incoherent yowlings somehow required yet another celebrity voice). When evil extraterrestrial Gallaxar (a relatively restrained Rainn Wilson) invades, the U.S. President (a disappointing Stephen Colbert, badly in need of restraint) is convinced by General Monger (Kiefer Sutherland, channeling Larry the Cable Guy) to arrange a battle royale involving...say it with me now...monsters vs. aliens.

Along the way, there are plenty of (mostly) clever gags -- my favorite involving a thumb-less wedding guest -- and nice (if simplistic) messages about acceptance and girl power. Meanwhile, even those currently experiencing Rogen fatigue may get a kick out of the actor’s familiar stoner giggle issuing from a family-friendly blob...a character the husky Canadian was pretty much born to play.

And besides, griping that DreamWorks’ new offering doesn’t measure up to, say, WALL-E or The Incredibles isn’t entirely fair. Since at least the Jeffrey Katzenberg era at Disney, American mainstream animated features (from Who Framed Roger Rabbit to Coraline) have been consistently smarter, better crafted and more humane than most Hollywood product over the same period. If Monsters vs. Aliens is just an average kiddie film, then here’s hoping all the kiddies raised on such films will come to demand at least as much quality from the studios as their generation moves forward into adulthood.

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Trailer Review: Monsters vs. Aliens

Paul Clark — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

After Monday’s Trailer Review of the teaser for Pixar’s Up, most trailers would be a letdown, and this one is no exception. Yet taken on its own terms, Monsters vs. Aliens looks pretty fun. For years, Dreamworks has been Pixar’s most ubiquitous rivals in the CG animation market, but while films like the Shrek franchise and Shark Tale relied far too heavily on easy pop culture references for their humor, they’ve been getting better in recent years, re-positioning themselves as the Warner Bros. to Pixar’s Disney. I like that the cast here is somewhat less star-studded than most previous Dreamworks Animation releases- Reese Witherspoon is top-lining of course, but the most of the other cast members they went for comedic talent rather than box-office clout. That said, the combination of Seth Rogen, Stephen Colbert, Rainn Wilson, Will Arnett, Paul Rudd, and even Hugh Laurie (such a perfect Jeeves) is pretty irresistible. It remains to be seen whether this is any good, but what can I say, I laughed, especially at the “Susan” gag.

DVD Digest for February 12, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, one of 2007's best films comes to DVD, and a master's musicals get the box-set treatment.

DVD of the Week: Most of the most beloved films of Ernst Lubitsch's career come from its final years, when the Lubitsch touch had already become well-established. But it's easy to forget that the master had already had a fruitful career long before Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. With the films included in this box set, Lubitsch was one of the first filmmakers to integrate song and narrative after the advent of talkies. But this would mean little today if the films themselves didn't hold up, and they do, with all of Lubitsch's trademark charm and Pre-Code sophistication. Eclipse has given their typical treatment (no extras, but lovely transfers) to the films The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, One Hour With You, and The Smiling Lieutenant, which boast some of the era's quintessential stars — Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, and Jeannette MacDonald. As always, Eclipse and parent company Criterion succeed in filling in another hole in cinema history.

Incidentally, today is my birthday, so if anyone out there is looking for a suitable gift, you could do a whole lot worse than this.

A bumper crop of more recent films being released on DVD this week, including: Ben Affleck's surprisingly great Gone Baby Gone (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray); James Gray's searing crime drama We Own the Night; Becoming Jane (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray), the second Austen-themed dramedy in as many weeks; John Cusack in The Martian Child (New Line); No Reservations (Warner, also Blu-Ray), the Catherine Zeta-Jones-starring remake of 2001's Mostly Martha; Tyler Perry's latest hit, Why Did I Get Married? (Lionsgate); the Apollo-mission documentary In the Shadow of the Moon (ThinkFilm); and John Turturro's polarizing star-studded quasi-musical, Romance and Cigarettes (Sony). In addition, this week finally sees the DVD release of Amy Heckerling's long-delayed I Could Never Be Your Woman (Genius Entertainment), starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, and Atonement Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan. If nothing else, now we can see what all the fuss was about.

Back to classics, this week also brings Sony's The Stanley Kramer Film Collection, a collection of five films Kramer directed and/or produced. The centerpiece of the set is a new 40th Anniversary Edition of Kramer's once-controversial interracial-marriage drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Also in the set is the Kramer-directed Ship of Fools, as well as The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, A Member of the Wedding, and The Wild One, all of which he produced.

Other older films coming to DVD include: The Joan Crawford Collection Volume 2 (Warner), which includes Sadie McKee, Strange Cargo, A Woman's Face, Flamingo Road, and Torch Song; Fox's Charlie Chan Collection Volume 4; and Kenneth Branagh's 1991 dramedy Peter's Friends (MGM), boasting an enviable cast, including Branagh, then-wife Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and Imelda Staunton. For some reason, MGM has seen fit to package the film in a box set alongside the misguided Elmore Leonard/Paul Schrader satire Touch, the 1988 Patrick Dempsey-Jennifer Connelly vehicle Some Girls, and Scott Baio and Willie Aames in Zapped! Strange bedfellows indeed.

Finally, if you're jonesing for TV on DVD, this week sees the release of season 1 of The Equalizer (Universal), as well as the Vern-approved Blade: the Series (New Line). But fear not — only one more week until the release of Walker, Texas Ranger: The Complete Fourth Season, the rare DVD that can be enjoyed by both Chuck Norris fans and Conan O'Brien watchers.