Reviews

Review: Monsters Vs. Aliens

A force to be reckoned with

By TOM MEEK | March 24, 2009

3.5 Stars

VIDEO: The trailer for Monsters Vs. Aliens

Susan Murphy (voice of Reese Witherspoon) has it all: she's about to marry the love of her life and jet off to Paris. Then Derek (Paul Rudd) pulls the plug on the honeymoon to interview for a newscaster job in Fresno. And it gets worse.

On her wedding day, Susan is blasted by a meteor, blows up into a 50-foot-tall babe (sci-fi B-movie allusion intended), and is whisked off to a military base, where she's teamed with a gelatinous blob named BOB (Seth Rogen), a towering pupa (hello Mothra!), and a demented cockroach (Hugh Laurie) to battle invading ETs.

The DreamWorks animation duo of Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon conjure a vibrant 3-D world and power it with a snarky script. The casting of Stephen Colbert as our president is inspired, and so are the brainless antics of BOB. But this movie's payoff, like that of The Incredibles, comes in the everyday dilemmas of its protagonist, and in that regard, Susan is a universal force to reckon with.

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