Susan Granger’s review of “Planet 51” (Columbia Pictures/Sony)
Just how eager are you to get the kids out of the house and into the movie theater this vacation week? Because while this bland cartoon kills a few hours, it offers little that’s memorable except a turnaround on the traditional human/alien roles in space exploration.
In a galaxy far, far away, there’s Planet 51, populated by happy, little, green people with four-fingered hands, webbed feet and antennas. Their culture and social structure, particularly their fear of extraterrestrial invasion, is strongly reminiscent of America’s, back in the 1950s Eisenhower era.
Lem (voiced by Justin Long) is an awkward, insecure teenager who wants to be an astronomer and is up for a job at the local observatory. He’d also like to impress his next-door neighbor, Neera (voiced by Jessica Biel), but can’t quite work up his confidence. That’s when Earthling Astronaut Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker (voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) lands his space ship in suburbia. Bewildered, he obviously needs help so, predictably, it’s Lem, his buddy Skiff (voiced by Seann William Scott) and Neera who come to his rescue, so he doesn’t wind up as an exhibit in the Alien Invaders Space Museum.
Uninterestingly scripted as a reverse “E.T.” riff (including a spoof shot of the bike-against-the-moon) by Joe Stillman (“Beavis and Butt-Head Do America”), insipidly helmed by first-time Spanish director Jorge Blanco and digitally fashioned by a Madrid-based company, Ilion Animation, this lowbrow, derivative creation with its rigid, rubbery figures and vulgar, bodily-function humor seems far more geared to the Saturday morning TV cartoon channel than the multiplex, particularly since the lip-sync’ing is sometimes badly timed. Even the vocal talents of John Cleese, as villainous Professor Kipple, and Gary Oldman, as General Grawl, who are determined to find Chuck and preserve his brain for scientific purposes, can’t spice up this cinematic turkey. Nor can Chuck’s little N.A.S.A. canine-programmed “Rover” which bears a strong resemblance to “Wall-E.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Planet 51” is an unimaginative, trivial 2. Unless you’re desperate for sci-fi diversion, wait for the dvd.
