Monsters vs. Aliens vs. Snot vs. Poop

Monsters vs. Aliens cuts a wide swath through comedy. One character is called General W.R. Monger, like warmonger, while a brainy scientist says the exclamatory phrase “by Hawkins’ chair,” an offbeat reference to physicist Stephen Hawking, who’s mapped the galaxy from a wheelchair nearly all his life. Brainy stuff for sure. And then a giant insect shoots snot rockets from its nose.

At times, the animated film can’t decide who the material is geared for: the kiddies being brought to see it or the adults doing the bringing. In one scene military experts are looking for science experts when someone says, “call India.” Many adults won’t get the joke — that India produces some of the world’s most gifted science and engineering minds — let alone children, who spent the car ride to the theater checking their nostrils for space invaders. To counterbalance that gag, the president of the United States goes from DEFCON 1 to “Code Brown” because he’s soiled his slacks, and a blob of ooze has to be reminded that “boys don’t have boobies.”

How frustrating this is! Last week I had a conversation with several people who wouldn’t have taken their grandchildren to see the magical Coraline, a far superior movie, had they known two buxom characters strip down to their undies to do an innocuous trapeze act. Yet here, the president poops himself to comic effect and I betcha no one complains. Better animated films (especially those by Pixar) balance the humor more precisely: The jokes are just smart enough for adults and just silly enough for children without going overboard in either direction.

Here I am, though, halfway through a review and I’ve yet to talk plot: An alien super villain tries to colonize the planet so the government sends in monsters it has collected to suppress the threat. The monsters are the fishy Missing Link (Will Arnett), the human roach Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a gelatinous blob named B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a giant furball called Insectasaurus and the 50-foot-tall woman, whose “official government-sanctioned monster name” is Ginormica, but call her Susan (Reese Witherspoon). They live in an underground government facility so vast and labyrinthine that it epitomizes Eisenhower’s definition of the Military Industrial Complex.

Susan is the central character and the way the movie plots her arc from bride-to-be to Ginormica is effective, if also kinda sad. I felt bad for Susan, the way she’s treated by her moronic TV weatherman fiancé, the way she’s hidden in a secret government facility, the way she loses everything except the friendship of the other monsters. She comes into her own, though, and eventually tussles with a giant robot in San Francisco — a fantastic scene — and then the alien geekus Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson). The sequel must give her a new groom, and maybe he’ll be as tall as her.

I must also comment on the voice acting, which I often fault in animated movies that include celebrity voices. These voices are perfect for these roles, especially Rogen, a convincing dunce, and Witherspoon, whose chirpy tones are just colorful enough for those animated frames.

Some of the humor is clearly of the lowest-common denominator kind — anything with snot or poop — but some of it is pretty clever: A headline about the alien invasion reads “U-F-Uh-Oh.” A man scans his iris, thumbprint, palmprint, elbow, tongue and butt to gain access to a war room that looks like the war room from Dr. Strangelove. B.O.B. the blob is capable of all kinds of contortions and bizarre visual gags, one of which involves the hilarious, context-free line, “I taste ham,” the meaning of which I will let you discover.

Really, though, Monsters vs. Aliens is a rather mellow spoof. The monsters are mutated devices from other movies: The Fly, The Blob, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Thing, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Cloverfield. Notice the clever Vertigo parody as Susan runs across rooftops in San Francisco and dangles from a rain gutter only to realize she’s nearly as tall as the building itself. Or how the alien’s computer is accessed using one of those step pads from that dancing arcade game. Or how the president communicates with a giant robot using the musical notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and when that doesn’t work he busts out with the Beverly Hills Cop theme on his Casio keyboard. Try to listen for the really obscure line about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

These are amusing jokes, but it all relates back to my original point: Will children get them? I think not, which is why Monsters vs. Aliens is peppered with potty humor as well, maybe as a backup. The animation looks good, the action flows well, the monsters are likeable (especially B.O.B., who falls in love with a Jell-O mold), but the film’s sense of humor needs a narrower focus. Or just less snot.

This review originally ran in the West Valley View March 27, 2009.