Ryan McNeil
Seven years ago, Dreamworks Animation brought us SHREK, with its heartfelt message that people might not look like much, but it’s what they have inside that counts. Then later, Dreamworks created KUNG FU PANDA, with its heartfelt message that people may not look like much, but it’s what they have inside that counts.
This month, Dreamworks has given audiences MONSTERS VS. ALIENS. Want to take a guess what the moral of this story is??
“MvA 3D” starts on Susan Murphy’s wedding day. Susan (Reese Witherspoon) is outside the church she’ll be married in, when she manages to get hit by a meteor. She seems OK at first, but moments into her wedding, she starts glowing green. No sooner has she turned a lovely shade of Shrek, than does she start to grow into a giant. The military wastes no time coming to the crash site, capture Susan, and bring her back to a top secret facility.
There she is informed by general W.R. Monger (Keifer Sutherland) that she is one of five monsters the American military has caught over the years. Soon, she befriends the others: Missing Link (Will Arnett), who looks like he just waded out of the black lagoon. Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a mad scientist who happened to transform himself in an experiment gone awry. A (literally) no-brained, jiggly blue blob named Bob (guess they ran out of clever names – he’s voiced by Seth Rogen). And finally an enormous grub named Insectosaurus.
They are kept in seclusion for their own protection, but when earth is threatened by an alien overlord named Gallaxhar, America finds its usual defenses useless, and needs to call on this band of misfits to protect them. A battle or two ensue, and yes indeed, our characters begin to learn that it doesn’t matter what the world’s reaction to your outward appearance, it’s the heart you have inside that counts.
Yawn.
MvA 3D actually paints itself into a very strange corner. On the one hand, the movie has been created with the 3-D effect clearly in mind. During quite a few of the lower action/higher dialogue moments, the 3-D composition keeps you drawn in. I haven’t seen the 2-D version, but in my estimation, many of these scenes would drag the film down. However, with the subtle 3-D, these scenes are snappier, and keep you drawn in.
The strange bit, is that the animators didn’t take the effect far enough. Aside from a brief moment early in the film, the 3-D effect never seems to reach out into the audience, instead seeming content to stay just one foot forward from the screen. What really worries me, is the news that starting now, every Dreamworks animated film will be produced in 3-D. So this lack of attention to detail could well be a sign of things to come.
What all of this adds up to is a movie relying on a gimmick, and not using the gimmick well enough. MvA 3D isn’t a very good story. It’s cute for kids, but animated films should try to reach further than that nowadays. I’m sure there was a better formula for this story – perhaps embracing the monsters as a part of the military’s line of defense, rather than a deep dark measure of last resort. Unfortunately, despite six credited screenwriters, what we’re given is a movie that steals from MONSTERS INC, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and DR. STRANGELOVE.
Once again, I have to look back on a Dreamworks Animated movie and wonder “what if?”. What if animators didn’t have the 3-D gimmick to fall back on? What if screenwriters cared to give Bob, Link, and Cockroach some real soul, and didn’t have celebrity voices to fall back on? Hell – what if Pixar had been given this concept instead of Dreamworks?? What truly disappoints me, is that films like SHREK, THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE, and WALL-E show that animation can be about more than just distracting kids with funny voices and bright colours for 90 minutes. sadly, nobody at Dreamworks seems to care about this premise.
Good review, its ashame the movie didn’t live up to its expectations. The trailers looked really funny and I had high hopes for this film.
Nice review hoping to catch this movie soon.
Though you are referring directly to 3-D your arguments could apply equally well to CGI (in live-action, not as its own form of animation). Technological development can lead to abundant laziness, as I think this past decade has shown.
I only saw the 2D version today, and I liked it – without the weird technological effects, it was easy to like the very subtle jokes throughout. I also saw it with only 5 other people in the theater and was able to just enjoy myself.