Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

Standard issue poster, nothing exciting here.

Directed by: Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon (between the two of them, they are responsible for some truly atrocious films, so this is easily their best one)

Written by: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky, Rob Letterman, Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger wrote the screenplay based off of Letterman and Vernon’s story.

Starring: the vocal talents of Reese Witherspoon, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Paul Rudd, Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Colbert among many others.

What it’s about: a group of monsters are released by the American government to combat an alien invasion

B-Movie Alternate Title: It IS a B-Movie title

Movie Mash Up: The Monster Squad + oh I dunno, any Alien movie minus all the disturbing imagery

What I liked: For the most part I love the vocal cast, I mean look at them all!  There’s a huge “Office” presence, the former awesome real-life couple of Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, Seth Rogen and I guess Reese Witherspoon can be okay sometimes.  The monsters are wonderful, particularly the moronic B.O.B.  Paul Rudd gets to play an asshole for once, and while the role isn’t great, it is decent comedy.  Honestly speaking, I would rather this entire cast were reunited for an R-rated animated version of this exact film.

What I disliked: Well, I didn’t even realise it until the beginning of the film, but with the Russian meteor event of the past week, the entire meteorite sequence at the building was totally unrealistic.  And yes, that is only because of all those Russian YouTube videos that I knew that.  It put me off for the whole film.  I thought it was decent, but it wasn’t on a Pixar level by any means.  Enjoyable, but unless you’re a kid, repeat viewings will probably make it less enjoyable each time around.

Would I recommend it to anyone?: Sure, it is not an offensively stupid animated film, and it is decently entertaining for both kids and adults.

Rating: 3 / 5

Probably the most entertaining bit of animation in the entire movie.

Water for Elephants (2011)

Today (Ed. note this was written on August 20th), a man that had a reputation for torturing me through the films of others re-entered my life in the form of a Tweet, saying my Movie A Day project would go over well if I accepted the movie challenges of others to review.  This is a man who once dared me to watch Batman & Robin for a second time and he is a sonuvabitch for having done so, though the review that it spawned was well-received.  In fact, the review was adapted into a play, and well, the results speak for themselves.

So this shady Brit made his challenge, and to my utter disappointment, some sad sack fuck had actually uploaded to a torrenting site and I now had access to it.  I also try to watch the newer releases so this blog thing can maybe show up in search engines somehow (which might mean I start action packing my tags with things like BRITNEY LINDSAY NAKED PHOTOS VIDEO SEX etc.), so I also totally did not torrent Water for Elephants because that would be bad and might totally help put Blockbuster out of its misery.  In hindsight, maybe I should have watched 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain instead.

It’s not a terrible movie, but the chemistry between Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon leaves such a bland taste in your mouth that you might as well be chewing on a piece of cardboard covered in cake icing.  Pretty on the outside, dry and flavourless beneath.  The only redeeming quality the movie had was because of the wonderful Christoph Waltz.  Yes, you know he’s going to be a bad man as soon as you see him, but he just makes being bad look so fun.  I was also not surprised to learn that the novel the film was adapted from was a novel written during National Novel Writing Month, because it seems to have just that much depth to it.

The elephant was also enjoyable.

2 / 5