Film: Monsters vs Aliens

You can hardly call Monsters vs Aliens run of the mill. It has everything that a classic CGI animation needs: it has monsters for one thing, and aliens for another. In that sense it's pretty much what you would expect from a film with such a title - this, however, ends up being the biggest thing wrong with MvA.

But let's start with the good stuff. The film is technically brilliant, with some good visuals, wonderful voice acting and laughs aplenty, something which we guessed must have come down to the presence of Seth Rogen (I laughed out loud at General Monger's description of Ginormica, for instance). As is fashionable with CGI nowadays we watched this in Not-Really-3D, except it wasn't actually that bad and I found myself even reflexively reacting to some bits. On paper there wasn't much wrong with this film.

But that's not enough in a genre where we expect nothing but excellence. In this case it was the story and plot which let the rest of the film down, with not enough time being spent on character or plot development. Things were happening way too fast, love for all the zany figures in the film was missing and as a result you find yourself not actually caring much about what happens. That's pretty much a failure for any animated flick.

So a bit of a let down, despite being really good otherwise? Pretty much. I'll still say that MvA is worth a watch though since even an average animation is better than most stuff out there.