MONSTERS VS. ALIENS (3D).

With all of the mixed reviews on practically every aspect of this movie, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is about to get married to her dream man, a weatherman named Derek (Paul Rudd). But when a meteorite crashes nearby, the special energy hits Susan and turns her into a giant. Enter a special U.S. government agency led by General W.R. Monger (Keifer Sutherland), who has secretly been collecting monsters over the years and keeping them in a hidden facility. The other monsters in the facility include a gelatinous blob named B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a mad scientist cockroach-man named Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), a testosterone-filled fish-man named The Missing Link (Will Arnet), and a giant mutated insect named Insectasaurus. But when an evil alien named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) wants the energy from Susan, he starts a war on Earth that forces General Monger to suggest to President Hathaway (Stephen Colbert) to use the monsters to help win.

It’s a relatively straight-forward plot, but nobody is going to see a movie entitled Monsters Vs. Aliens to experience a narrative masterpiece. The biggest complain for the film is that it takes too long for anything to happen. It does, indeed, take about 30 minutes before the alien part of the story is even introduced. But that doesn’t mean everything else in that 30 minutes is bad. God forbid a movie try to set up its characters and give them even the smallest bit of depth. I never once looked at my watch through the entire movie. The movie was very entertaining from beginning to end.

While all of the characters were fun in their own way, I agree with most others and say that Seth Rogen’s B.O.B. was the heart of the film. He stole every scene he was in, which was most of the ones that didn’t focus on Susan’s personal life. But B.O.B. was just straight-up hilarious. I’ve never been a big fan of Seth Rogen’s laugh (I find it kinda annoying, really), but for whatever reason, it really worked for this character. To see B.O.B. launched into the sky and hear Seth Rogen’s laugh was just hysterical to me.

The least intriguing character was Will Arnet’s The Missing Link. He wasn’t a bad character. He just wasn’t nearly as interesting as the others. I loved General W.R. Monger (who doesn’t even sound like Keifer Sutherland) and Stephen Colbert’s President Hathaway, as well. As you also might have noticed, the movie is full of incredible voice actors. Much like in Kung Fu Panda where almost every character was voiced by a known actor (either in television or movies), Monsters Vs. Aliens even gave little roles to big names. Jeffrey Tambor, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, and Amy Poehler also share voices in this film. I don’t even know who the character was that Renee Zellweger voiced. That’s how small it must have been.

Also, whereas Kung Fu Panda was played homage to wuxia films, Monsters Vs. Aliens is a large homage to old B-horror movies and sci-fi in general. There are references from Third Encounters to Spaceballs. And then there are other homages to films like Dr. Strangelove and Beverly Hills Cop, but they’re fun anyway. If you know your film, you’ll see references all over the place. And I think that’s where a lot of people fail to grasp this movie, it seems. This is the kind of movie that falls into categories with Shaun of the Dead (though not quite as genius). They’re parody, but at the same time they pay respects to the films they’re poking fun at.

The humor in the film is somewhere between Kung Fu Panda and Shrek. It’s mostly kid-friendly, a bit of slapstick, and a couple adult jokes just for fun. My personal favorite of the adult jokes (which I was waiting for, though I can’t believe they actually used) was in General Monger’s description of Susan’s new giant form and how she’s gotten bigger while his hands are out in front of his chest (which he then notices and drops down).

On the side of the visuals, the movie was very fun to look at. I saw the film in 3D, and it was honestly one of my favorite 3D experiences thus far out of all the 3D films I’ve watched lately. All of the others that have come out recently haven’t seemed to use the gimmick to its full potential, but I finally believe they made a movie that damn near did. This really is a movie that needs to be seen in 3D, and I honestly couldn’t imagine watching it any other way.

If I had any complaints, it would be that I would have liked more character development between Susan and the monsters. Most reviews I’ve read said they just wanted to get to the alien stuff. But I thought the movie could have used at least some kind of montage (yes, a montage) to show Susan becoming friendlier with the other monsters. As it is, it goes from Susan being freaked out about where she is to it being a month later and her being best friends with everybody. In between is the alien introduction, but I think there should have been something else to show that span of time between Susan and the other monsters.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the film. It was funny, especially B.O.B., and I did laugh out loud quite a few times. It was great to look at in its 3D form (though I figure it’d be good to look at in any form… I’d just prefer the 3D). The story isn’t anything epic, but all the movie homages are cool. I thought it was great fun, and I’d totally see it again.

A Keanu 'Whoa'

MIRRORS.

So, I wasn’t originally thinking about seeing this in theater, but I was bored and wanted to see something that could be fun, thrilling, brainless, and entertaining (and I missed the closest showing for Death Race). So I decided… what the heck. Might as well, right? Plus, the majority of the reviews I had read were unbalanced (usually things like how the first part was better than the second part, or that the movie was awesome, or that the movie just plain sucked). Not to mention that, at this point, it has a 6.3 on imdb, is directed by the pretty talented Alexandre Aja, and has brief Amy Smart nudity. In short, I went.

The movie is about down-and-out Jack Bau… erm… Ben Carson (Keifer Sutherland), who was forced to resign from his detective duties after he accidentally killed another cop. His marriage with his supernaturally hot wife, Amy (Paula Patton), is also failing, though he’ll do anything to be with his two kids. So he’s living with his sister, Angela (Amy Smart), and trying to get his life back in order by getting addicted to pills that help get over alcoholism and getting a job as a security officer to help get over killing a cop. So what is he security for? Well… something that really doesn’t need guarding. It’s a big Mayflower store that got burned down, so he has to guard all the crap inside that wasn’t destroyed by smoke or fire (at least I think so… if it was really explained at all, I missed it), including some really big mirrors. But then it turns out that something is inside the mirrors and is both haunting and attacking him and his loved ones. So Ben is forced to figure out what the mirrors want and act all detective-like in order to save his family.

You can tell that the plot and everything about it is based on a foreign movie, because it’s similar to pretty much every other Hollywood remake of Asian horror. The only difference between this movie and movies like The Ring or The Grudge? This one actually has tense or scary moments. The others are usually pretty pathetic. I didn’t think that the second half of the movie was worse than the first half, as a lot of other people seemed to think. I thought the whole mystery thing was interesting. And while the result wasn’t your typical child-accidentally-died or child-brutally-murdered case, it was still very much an interesting, albeit a bizarre concept (and quite Asian). In fact, the whole climax reminded me of something from a survival horror video game, such as Resident Evil or Silent Hill. When it started, I was like “Boss battle! Go, Jack Bauer, Go!”

The music was good, though I think the movie relied too heavily on it. It was almost overpowering in its use. And I know the director has the ability to be creepy or scary without the intense music. Nevertheless, it was still a pretty decent soundtrack.

And speaking of the director, if there’s one thing that Alexandre Aja knows how to do, it’s setting the atmosphere. When I saw the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, I could almost feel the heat of the desert along with the characters, and I could feel their isolation and terror. Similarly, the way this movie was shot, I could feel the paranoia and tension brought on by any reflective surface. And mirrors have always been a scare-tactic in horror movies, but to widen the range to any reflective surface and have any of these reflective surfaces be the cause of death increases the tension of almost every minute of the movie, because you’re always waiting for that next scare, not knowing if it’ll come or not.

The acting was a bit mediocre, but it only bothered me a couple of times. Seriously, by the time the end of the movie starts to kick into gear and Paula Patton is soaking wet in a white tank-top, I couldn’t care less about acting. I mean, some of it was good, but most of it… not so much. And I couldn’t tell if it was because of the actors or because of the script they were given, as some of the characters came off wrong. There was one scene that really bugged me, toward the beginning (and I think this was more of a writing issue). But Keifer and Paula are arguing, Paula having started it, and out of nowhere Paula yells at him. She just goes off. And then Keifer tries to keep it cool, but eventually yells back. And then, I kid you not, Paula’s character is like (and I’m paraphrasing here) “See? That’s what I mean. I never know how you’re going to act,” or, in other words, “why the hell are you yelling at me? It’s not like I just bit your head off first and then acted all innocent and hypocritical in the situation. Oh whatever, let’s make out.” And then they proceed to forget everything and do so. Oh, and one last thing about the writing that bugged me. How coincidental can you get when everything you need to solve the case is right at your fingertips? For instance, Ben was a former detective, so he had a couple connections in getting old hospital files and such. Or how his wife was a mortician, and he needed to urgently see a corpse that had recently been added to the morgue, so she was able to get him in. Just stuff like that was too cliché and too simplistic.

Overall, the movie wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. The CGI was a bit too fake at times, and the plot turned pretty sketchy every now and then. But there was a good balance between tension and gore. The visual style, I think, was the best part about the movie, with constant showings of reflections in different objects. The very end of the movie didn’t make much sense, though. I mean, I understand what happened, but I just don’t know how it happened. Though I did have to smirk at a comment somebody made as I was leaving the theater, which really fit in with how Hollywood is going these days. “So I guess there’s gonna be a sequel. What’re they gonna call it? Reflections?”

Indeed, movie-goer. Indeed.

Stop Saying Okay! Okay.