Monsters Vs. Aliens

Copyright 2009, DreamWorks Animation

The debate comes up every time a DreamWorks or Pixar film is released: does story or money matter more? DreamWorks, mostly because they just make more movies per year, always ends up with more money in the bank than Disney/Pixar does. Should it matter that DreamWorks wins the financial end of things when Pixar is more likely to make a film that will resonate for more than a few seconds after you leave the multiplex? And so the debate rolled on when, two weeks ago, the latest DreamWorks animated feature, Monsters Vs. Aliens, was released in theaters, in 3-D.

Well, the debate will rage on. Monsters Vs. Aliens made a pretty penny at the box office and helped push forward the idea to theater exhibitors that 3-D technology is a must in just about every screen in the country. With regards to the 3-D debate, I'm with Jeffrey Katzenberg: make 3-D a common thing in movie theaters. The amount of money being made on movies with this technology, such as Coraline or Journey to the Center of the Earth is helping woo some exhibitors over. Monsters Vs. Aliens is another strong argument for 3-D, partly because of how many more people saw it in 3-D instead of 2-D, and partly because the animation speaks for itself. Of course, the animation in the 2008 DreamWorks animated feature Kung Fu Panda was far stronger, but the 3-D technology helps make Monsters Vs. Aliens seem more real, more alive.

You may have noticed that I'm talking more about the technology than the story here and, well, there's a damn good reason: Monsters Vs. Aliens is not a movie about story. Like most DreamWorks films, the movie is about making you laugh at pop-culture references delivered by big-name actors and never remembering the experience. Granted, the animation has come far from the time when Will Smith was made into a fish that looked remarkably like...Will Smith, in 2005's Shark Tale. Still, one of the biggest gags in this movie is that Stephen Colbert plays the President of the United States. The gag isn't what he says as the character, but the fact that he's playing the character.

I can't say I wasn't moderately entertained by Monsters Vs. Aliens (its San Francisco-based action sequence was about as zippy and fast-paced as you can get these days), and I do love the cast of the film (among the stars are Colbert, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Reese Witherspoon, Will Arnett, Kiefer Sutherland, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, John Krasinski, and Jeffrey Tambor). That said, the movie tries too hard to be funny and tries for the wrong audience. Having the President try to communicate with an alien via the five-note theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is amusing enough to the adults in the audience, but having him then follow with the synth theme from Beverly Hills Cop is awfully stupid. First of all, why that theme? Second of all, no kid in the audience is going to get that reference. Speaking of, though I've seen the film two weeks late, I was in a relatively packed crowd, filled with lots of kids who didn't laugh...at all. I bet they liked it, but the only ones who laughed at this movie were the adults. I'll say it again...DreamWorks is aiming for the wrong audience.

Still, a movie like Monsters Vs. Aliens is far more tolerable than recent DreamWorks animated entries, and I continue to hope for their success in the future. One can only hope for them to work as hard on the stories as they do on the technology.