Planète 51

Planet 51 (1:31, PG) — SF, 2nd string, original

Let us enumerate the other movies which this one rips off (or, if you wish, to which it pays homage): 2001, Alien, The Day the Earth Stood Still, ET, The Right Stuff, Singin' in the Rain, Star Wars, Terminator, and WALL•E. Even the inexplicable rain (rocks) is evocative of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

The overall theme — alien race in the foreground with humans as the bad guys — has likewise been done in Battle for Terra, The Tale of Despereaux, James Cameron's long-in- production Avatar, and sort of in District 9 and Delgo.

But you know what they say: If you copy from only 1 source, it's a ripoff; 2 is plagiarism; 3 is research; 4 or more is scholarship and will likely lead to tenure. Besides, the target audience is too young to have seen almost any of those other movies, and the writer (Joe Stillman) must have figured he needed to put something in for the parents.

The nostril-less green-skinned natives of Planet 51 don't call it that, of course. To them, it's just "the world", part of a universe that may be as much as 500 miles across, with thousands of stars. This pathetic naivete has not kept them from discovering anti-gravity, however, but it seems that they never figured out how to apply it to anything besides cars. Similarly, they may be aware of design forms other than the sphere, but it seems not to have occurred to them to use anything else. These oddities aside, their world looks a whole lot like Eisenhower-era America, complete with white picket fences, B&W TV, and alien-invasion movies.

Rocketing down into this peaceful scene comes a LEM (lunar excursion module), piloted by Capt. Charles T. "Chuck" Baker (Dwayne Johnson). It lands on the front lawn of one of the globular homes, and Baker strides out of it to plant the US flag on the sidewalk, apparently totally oblivious to his surroundings. The natives finally close their mouths and go into hysterics. Chuck flees.

The main viewpoint character is Lem (heh, get it?), a junior assistant curator at the local planetarium (voiced by Justin Long, who you just kept waiting to say "I'm a Mac."). He's got the hots for the GND, Neera (Jessica Biel), but has been too shy to make a move. She gets put off when it appears that he's anti-alien, but in fact he's just acting that way as he tries to provide Chuck with a hideout preparatory to getting his spaceship back.

The military under Gen. Grawl (Gary Oldman) shows up and behaves as it did in TDTESS. Among the grunts are stock Rosencrantz and Guildenstern figures, apparently to provide comic relief in what was ostensibly a comedy to begin with.

This all takes place in the town of Glipforg, and I spent way too much time during the show trying to figure out what it must be an anagram for. (Frogglip, which describes Neera?)

We know from Monsters Inc. that it's fiendishly difficult to animate hair and fur. If you recall Up, you may have been among the 2% of the audience that noticed Carl growing a very fine, sparse gray stubble over the course of his adventure. This is the sort of thing that nobody would have noticed if it had been absent, but the Pixar guys threw it in anyway, because they're Pixar. Ilion Animation, the Spanish firm behind Planet 51, not only didn't go that far, they decided to skip the hair thing altogether and went with banana dreads for the natives.

OK, so I've already rattled off lack of originality, inconsistent technology, gratuitous distractions, and corner-cutting animation. Why then do I rate this flik as high as "average"? Because the animation was good enuf for the quality of the film, the story was good- natured, there were several smiley moments (tho no out-loud laffs), and it's hard to get too down on any movie where a jostled iPod starts playing "Macarena" and the general exclaims "I've never seen such a heinous weapon.".

In this successful Spanish picture there are humor , rip-roaring adventures , action , thrills and many other things . It deals with an American astronaut Captain Charles "Chuck" Baker (Voice by Dwayne Johnson) 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. But on this alien planet the media has tagged spacemen as brain-eating, zombie-creating monsters, causing Baker to run . The planet is set in the 50s and even though much on the alien planet is round in design, nothing has wheels . There Chuck meets Lem (the name voiced by Justin Long, is also the abbreviation for Lunar Excursion Module. NASA's LEM was used as part of the Apollo program to land astronauts on the moon) , an average teenager working on getting the girl named Neera (Jessica Biel's voice) and furthering his career at the local planetarium . While , Chuck's command module called Odyssey (this is the same name of the command module used in the Apollo 13 mission) is orbiting the planet .

Fabulous and amusing C.G. animated film , lavishly produced and achieving a big success . Gorgeous and astounding animated picture with outstanding and fantastic starring , an astronaut called Chuck and his good friend , Lem . Fun story of outland space plenty of adventures , bemusing situations , fights , chuckles , emotion , and action . Entertaining and solid retelling from Atresmedia Cine , the film division of DeAPlaneta's broadcasting group Atresmedia or Antena 3 , co-produced Planet . The whole piece of adventure teems with excitement , thrills , humor , astral atmosphere and being pretty amusing . The movie was originally going to be called "Planet One" but the owners of Planet One, who make children's and teen TV programs in the USA, threatened to sue . The film's producers chose to call the movie Planet 51 (2009), acknowledging Area 51, the supposed center of UFO investigation in America. Spain's animation output is now knocking on global market doors, boosted by the growing commitment of private broadcasters such as Antena 3 TV . Ilion Animation Studios' $60 million Planet 51, a Sony U.S. pickup, paved the way by scoring $105.7 million worldwide in 2010 . Formerly , the great producer , Julio Fernandez from Fantastic factory had produced successful animated pictures such as ¨El Raton Perez I and II¨ or "The Hairy Tooth Fairy", ¨Donkey Xote¨ , ¨Gisaku¨ , ¨El Cid : the legend¨ by Jose Pozo and ¨Goomer¨. Two of Spain's more anticipated releases — the $28.6 million-budgeted "Justin and the Knights of Valour," produced by Antonio Banderas, and Argentinian Juan Jose Campanella's $20 million Foosball are animated features.

The motion picture was compellingly realized by a trio of perfect filmmakers as Jorge Blanco , Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez ,with a high budget of $70 million, this is the most expensive movie produced in Spain . Production lasted 16 months, roughly half the amount of time it takes to make a Pixar movie. Rating : Above average , worthwhile watching .

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.

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.

I have always loved animation, whether it's cartoons(Looney Tunes and Silly Symphonies), films or TV shows. Planet 51 is not a bad movie, but at the end of the day it felt rather bland. I've seen worse certainly, but I can also think of better out there. The animation is wonderful though, very rich in colour and detail. The soundtrack is memorable, there are a few funny moments that will have children chuckling, fun set pieces and a couple of Cold War pastiches that will keep adults interested, Rover is a great character and by far the best character of the movie and it all begins very promisingly. The voice cast are full of great actors, especially Gary Oldman and John Cleese, and Planet 51 generally uses them well, Dwayne Johnson is an especially likable lead. However, the story, despite its great premise, is rather weak and unoriginal in structure and after a promising twenty minutes it is never quite as interesting. I liked the Cold War pastiches, but some of the other references were verging on tired. Among the funny moments, there is the overall mediocrity of the script, with a lot of clichéd dialogue. The characters are weak and stereotypical, with one of the blandest villains I've seen in an animated film recently, and the ending is very predictable. In conclusion, looks great but at the end of the day it felt very bland and forgettable. 6/10 Bethany Cox