Planet 51

American astronaut Captain Charles "Chuck" Baker lands on Planet 51 thinking he's the first person to step foot on it. To his surprise, he finds that this planet is inhabited by little green people who are happily living in a white picket fence world, and whose only fear is that it will be overrun by alien invaders...like Chuck! This film is made from the alien perspective. They are like the 50's Earth, they have the hippie guy, the youngsters who are open to new ideas that aliens are friendly. Frankly, I liked the film even though it wasn't epic or adventurous enough. This is a film made for the kids have a great time & I know they'll enjoy this. The thing I didn't like was that the love story between Neera & Lem seemed to be forced. Planet 51 is the hometown & Chuck the human astronaut is the alien in this film. It was funny at times & I think every youngster can relate to something in the film & the old timers can get a kick out of the 50's feeling.

I liked how it rained rocks & how the evil doctor laughed. Everything about the storyline is about the 50's. Even they have The Humaniacs horror film that is considered scary for their generation. The premise of the plot is great, they could have made it better. The voice actors Dwayne Johnson (Chuck), Justin Long (Lem) & Neera (Jessica Biel) all did a good job. You'll enjoy this if you watch this with some kids.

7/10

It's an "ET-in-reverse" story. An Earthling astronaut gets stuck on what he calls an alien planet. The local green folks call him (accurately) the alien. The story is a fond tribute to drive-in's, space-creatures sci-fi, and the 50's. With the Area 51 reference in its title, you know the film will be poking fun at everything it can get its hands on, including itself. It delivers this.

There's hover craft that look like big-finned autos of that era, black & white TV, and pioneer rock 'n' roll. It's clever humor, although some of this has been done before. There's a lot of parallels to Monsters vs. Aliens, too, in that frequent references to classic sci-fi flicks (up to the present, not just the 50's) pop up in sight gags and one-liner jokes. My fav was the character that resembled the Aliens movie creatures. There are other clichés sent up for satire: a loud mouth hawkish general, a wanna-be scientist, etc. Adults won't be bored thanks to these in-jokes, and the kids should like the slapstick stuff.

The film boasts a great idea, and some, but not all, of the potential is utilized. It's good natured and fun, rating about average for an animated feature.

First of all, let me say that I'm tired of dumb reviews saying "why do aliens speak English?" or "they fart and burp a lot". Disney's The Princess and the Frog's trailer has about 3 ass related jokes and one burp in less than 45 seconds. Toy Story's characters spoke English and understood humans and nobody wondered why. A house managed to be lifted by balloons in Up with no police radars detecting anything. So, this said: Let's sit down and enjoy a movie and stop looking for silly excuses to criticize it.

I watched Planet51 with my two nephews (8 and 10 years old) and they enjoyed it all the way. The quality is as good as Pixar's or Dreamworks and, yes, it's true the script is somewhat flat and very repetitive, but as the kids said to me "We didn't understand Wall-E's plot and didn't sympathize with any characters in Up, but Planet51 we did." It has some really funny characters (the white camera ala Wall-e and the alien pet), plus it's easy to understand, and despite the lack of chases or explossions it keeps its pace all the time and, as I said before, kids love the characters and understand -and enjoy- the plot.

As Groucho Marx once said: A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!!!

I took my 8 year old daughter and her friend to see this opening night. There was a decent size crowd who seemed to enjoy it. For ESPN fans one of their long time personalities, who has his own video short series on the website, was there. But I digress.

It took a while to realize that it definitely was Dwayne Johnson as the astronaut's voice. He's created a great niche for himself in family films and I think he does good job. Justin Long was a good choice for the lead "alien" Lem and John Cleese is always a good choice as he did a small role as the professor. The role of Skiff brought good humor to many scenes. Sean William Scott was very animated in his voice acting for this character. Other than Rover and the hippie-like guy, the rest of the characters are just back drops without adding much.

We laughed quite a bit throughout the movie, which is mostly the point. There was plenty of cute humor with the dog-like robot Rover, who was a little reminiscent of WALL-E, a little. The down-side was that it never drew you in to fully connect, sympathize, like or dislike any of the characters. I didn't see myself rooting for anyone over anyone else. If the message is supposed to be about not judging anyone based on appearance, that message was shallow. If the message was to keep an open-mind toward what is possible and to learn new things, that message was under-developed.

Bottom line, the kids enjoyed it and we had a good entertaining night out. So in that respect it served its' purpose. The animation was suitable and I liked the 50's like theme of the planet. One or two adult humor jokes in there that could have been omitted and not change the movie.

For a family movie 7/10.

Please disregard RichardSRussell-1's review, I am not sure he watched the movie, at least not with very much attention. First, he states "humans as the bad guys" but the only human was the movie's good guy! The military general was the bad guy, and even a four year old could easily see that. Second, I'm not sure if he is familiar with movies playing on themes and paying homage to other movies, stories, and so forth. That's not ripping off, but that reviewer obviously can't even grasp that concept. Countless movies, perhaps most of them, will include scenes and lines deliberately intended to make reference other works – this is not plagiarism, it's paying homage! There has not been a single children's animated movie with this particular theme, not even close (at least no movie or major work). Yes, it is essentially a reverse E.T. and builds on many, many other movies that have come before. But the overall work is not a copy of anything else.

It's a play on the common movie theme, and popular attitude in the 1950's, that all aliens must be terrifying monsters and the civic paranoia and fear that follows the suggestion of an alien visitor. Given that, it *has* to copy themes and images and possibly even lines from other movies. That's the whole point.

Having seen almost every kid's animated movie out there, I found this movie to be very enjoyable and I loved seeing it. More importantly (at least if you're a parent) my kids loved this movie, and they don't like every kid's movie. It may not be the greatest movie of all time, but I would definitely recommend it and a great watch.