ANI-MOVIES, *Monster Vs. Aliens

I didn't get around to watching this when it first came out in theatres, but was suprised at how good it was when I checked out the DVD. Dreamworks(creators of Shrek and Kung Fu Panda)did this as a comedic homage to the monster movies of the 50s.

Starting out, Susan was a blushing bride about to be married to her shallow weatherman boyfriend Derek, but a meteorite chrashes near her and dowses her with an outer space radiation called quantonium. She is then transformed into a white-haired giantess, and immeadiately accosted by the military, who apparently were expecting a giant to be there at the crashsite in the first place because they had large hypodermic needles to put her to sleep with. Susan wakes up in the secret government facility of Area 52 which houses other kinds of "monsters". The team consists of Bob the blob, the amphibious Missing Link, the insectoid mad scientist Dr. Cockroach, and the tremendous kaiju Insectosaurus. Things seem miserable for Susan(now called Ginormica), but the evil alien overlord Gallaxhar shows up in his starship and launches a giant robot loose on San Francisco. So the monsters are sent to stop the robot in exchange for their freedom. After an epic battle that wrecks the Golden Gate Bridge, they destroy the mecha, and Susan heads to her hometown along with her new monster buds to see her fiance. However, Derek breaks up with her, which makes Susan embrace her monsterhood. This would be nice, except that Gallaxhar kidnaps her to extract the quantonium from her to power his clone-making machine and invade Earth. Bob, Link, and Cockroach board the ship and find Susan who is now normal size after having the radiation sucked out of her. They manages to destroy the ship's computer, and Susan confronts Gallaxhar, which gets her cosmic mojo again, turning her back into a giant. They escape on Insectosaurus who is now a gargantuan butterfly. The monsters then agree to continue working with the military to defend Earth against other threats.

M.V.A. was a very enjoyable movie. The 3-D is applied wonderfully, unlike some other animated films. The story pays great attention to the Silver Age schlock creature features, both the stereotypical monster ones and flying saucer flicks. The casting was fine, although it was a little overboard with Stephen Colbert at the President, and they could've just had John DiMaggio doing the voice of Keifer Sutherland's character, General Monger. Like in most Dreamworks cartoons, there is alot of pop culture subreferences, although one of the genuinely good ones is the DDR session. There's already been an OVA prequal called BOB's Big Break, and a Halloween TV special, but knowing Dreamworks there's probably gonna be an actual movie sequal too. Definately seek out this monster mash!