Planeta 51

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.

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.

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

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!!!

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.".