I find it hard to fathom why the critics have been so kind to this dull wasted opportunity. The trades were positive; it has a 70% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. My only thought – 3D has blinded people again.
I hope people start waking up to poor films rendered in beautiful dynamic technology like this and Beowulf soon. This reminds me of computer animation. With the redoubtable Pixar leading the way everyone thought computer animation was the second coming, that it could do no wrong. And quickly those jumping on the bandwagon ignored the noble Pixar aims of getting the absolute best story, voices, artists etc together to create a truly great movie and we were inundated with bilge like Shrek 2, Shark Tale, Robots, Valiant and Madagascar, until – thank the good lord – the proliferation of utter crap in 2006 (Ant Bully, The Wild, Flushed Away, Open Season) made audiences notice the films themselves still needed to be good regardless of how they were rendered. Of course the backlash also hit some quite good films, Pixar’s weak-for-them but underrated Cars and Sony’s surprisingly good Monster House, but that was inevitable.
The film industry has always been prone to sweeping statements and DreamWorks Animation is the worst purveyor of this. Jeffrey Katzenberg and his team of soulless money-grubbers thought they could match Pixar’s majesty by churning out pop-culture referencing rubbish again and again. For every good DWA film (arguably only Antz, Shrek and Kung Fu Panda – and maybe at a stretch Bee Movie – fit this) there are two painfully awful ones. For every bad Pixar film there are, well… there are no bad Pixar films! Even the worst (Cars, A Bug’s Life) are better than almost anything DWA has done (again here I’d say Shrek and Kung Fu Panda are better to be fair).
For crying out loud DWA even managed to make Aardman look bad with a weak Curse Of The Were-Rabbit and the downright appallingly unfunny Flushed Away. DWA kissed off traditional animation, with Katzenberg saying in 2003 “"I think the idea of a traditional story being told using traditional animation is likely a thing of the past." Meanwhile Pixar’s John Lasseter brought the extraordinary films of Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki to broader Western attention.
Now it seems to me that 3D is the new blinding science! It does look great. I’m the first to admit that. Hell I wrote a big feature for a trade magazine, interviewing James Cameron about it in summer 2006. I’ve seen 3D test footage of Titanic, Star Wars: Episode IV and Lord Of The Rings. I’ve seen more than 10 films in the new 3D. And yes even on crap like Journey To The Center Of The Earth it does add an element of entertainment. But positive reviews for films like Beowulf and Monsters Vs Aliens make me feel critics are reviewing the technology not the film. Indeed, when Beowulf came out nearly every positive review waxed lyrical about how amazing the 3D was while either ignoring the film or, occasionally, having to admit the film behind the effect was pretty poor.
I think 3D has to seen as a tool to add to a great movie, not as a way to excuse bad ones. Three of my most anticipated films of the year (see post Jan 19 this year) are 3D – James Cameron’s Avatar, Henry Selick’s Coraline and Pixar’s Up – but I believe all the filmmakers involved will deliver a great film first and a great 3D event second. For me Monsters Vs Aliens seems lazy and the emphasis Jeffrey Katzenberg puts on 3D is disturbingly like saying “if you build it they will come”. I love Field Of Dreams as much as the next sap but damn if those ghostly baseball players didn’t put on a good game it’d be a disappointment, right?
Monsters Vs Aliens is just that: a huge disappointment. The “message” is hackneyed and unsubtle. The jokes are over-played and stepped on again and again. In typical DWA style a funny joke is grasped like life-preserver and repeated over-and-over or expanded upon unnecessarily to kill the laugh so dead you can’t figure out what element started out seeming funny. I love ’50s B-movies and the character designs of the monsters (Fly-esque Dr Cockroach, Creature From The Black Lagoon-esque Missing Link, funny Blob B.O.B., Mothra-like Insectosaurus and 50 Foot Woman Ginormica) are well done and the voices chosen fit them well for once (none of that Shark Tale “cram another misjudged celeb voice in” here), but that makes it all the more inexcusable that the film struggles to raise a film or a whoop!
Good concept, good design, good voice casting should help achieve a good film, right? Of course, but as with everything the script must come first and as is typical of DWA it seems as if that element was an afterthought. The set-pieces are uninspired. The most adorable character (Insectosaurus) is wasted and then ruined! Critics have said this is Seth Rogen’s (B.O.B.) film and what laughs there are do come from his character but they are all (and I mean ALL) in the trailers.
It is such a shame that what could easily have been a great film was so hugely screwed up because the people behind it were fixated on the technology when they should have been paying attention elsewhere. DWA delivered one of its best films last year with a well voice-cast, smart, funny, genre-spinning animation – Kung Fu Panda. That was the promise Monsters Vs Aliens had, but they delivered an uninspired Over The Hedge-a-like!
On the plus side it was better than last year’s computer-animated low, Igor!
I hope people start waking up to poor films rendered in beautiful dynamic technology like this and Beowulf soon. This reminds me of computer animation. With the redoubtable Pixar leading the way everyone thought computer animation was the second coming, that it could do no wrong. And quickly those jumping on the bandwagon ignored the noble Pixar aims of getting the absolute best story, voices, artists etc together to create a truly great movie and we were inundated with bilge like Shrek 2, Shark Tale, Robots, Valiant and Madagascar, until – thank the good lord – the proliferation of utter crap in 2006 (Ant Bully, The Wild, Flushed Away, Open Season) made audiences notice the films themselves still needed to be good regardless of how they were rendered. Of course the backlash also hit some quite good films, Pixar’s weak-for-them but underrated Cars and Sony’s surprisingly good Monster House, but that was inevitable.
The film industry has always been prone to sweeping statements and DreamWorks Animation is the worst purveyor of this. Jeffrey Katzenberg and his team of soulless money-grubbers thought they could match Pixar’s majesty by churning out pop-culture referencing rubbish again and again. For every good DWA film (arguably only Antz, Shrek and Kung Fu Panda – and maybe at a stretch Bee Movie – fit this) there are two painfully awful ones. For every bad Pixar film there are, well… there are no bad Pixar films! Even the worst (Cars, A Bug’s Life) are better than almost anything DWA has done (again here I’d say Shrek and Kung Fu Panda are better to be fair).
For crying out loud DWA even managed to make Aardman look bad with a weak Curse Of The Were-Rabbit and the downright appallingly unfunny Flushed Away. DWA kissed off traditional animation, with Katzenberg saying in 2003 “"I think the idea of a traditional story being told using traditional animation is likely a thing of the past." Meanwhile Pixar’s John Lasseter brought the extraordinary films of Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki to broader Western attention.
Now it seems to me that 3D is the new blinding science! It does look great. I’m the first to admit that. Hell I wrote a big feature for a trade magazine, interviewing James Cameron about it in summer 2006. I’ve seen 3D test footage of Titanic, Star Wars: Episode IV and Lord Of The Rings. I’ve seen more than 10 films in the new 3D. And yes even on crap like Journey To The Center Of The Earth it does add an element of entertainment. But positive reviews for films like Beowulf and Monsters Vs Aliens make me feel critics are reviewing the technology not the film. Indeed, when Beowulf came out nearly every positive review waxed lyrical about how amazing the 3D was while either ignoring the film or, occasionally, having to admit the film behind the effect was pretty poor.
I think 3D has to seen as a tool to add to a great movie, not as a way to excuse bad ones. Three of my most anticipated films of the year (see post Jan 19 this year) are 3D – James Cameron’s Avatar, Henry Selick’s Coraline and Pixar’s Up – but I believe all the filmmakers involved will deliver a great film first and a great 3D event second. For me Monsters Vs Aliens seems lazy and the emphasis Jeffrey Katzenberg puts on 3D is disturbingly like saying “if you build it they will come”. I love Field Of Dreams as much as the next sap but damn if those ghostly baseball players didn’t put on a good game it’d be a disappointment, right?
Monsters Vs Aliens is just that: a huge disappointment. The “message” is hackneyed and unsubtle. The jokes are over-played and stepped on again and again. In typical DWA style a funny joke is grasped like life-preserver and repeated over-and-over or expanded upon unnecessarily to kill the laugh so dead you can’t figure out what element started out seeming funny. I love ’50s B-movies and the character designs of the monsters (Fly-esque Dr Cockroach, Creature From The Black Lagoon-esque Missing Link, funny Blob B.O.B., Mothra-like Insectosaurus and 50 Foot Woman Ginormica) are well done and the voices chosen fit them well for once (none of that Shark Tale “cram another misjudged celeb voice in” here), but that makes it all the more inexcusable that the film struggles to raise a film or a whoop!
Good concept, good design, good voice casting should help achieve a good film, right? Of course, but as with everything the script must come first and as is typical of DWA it seems as if that element was an afterthought. The set-pieces are uninspired. The most adorable character (Insectosaurus) is wasted and then ruined! Critics have said this is Seth Rogen’s (B.O.B.) film and what laughs there are do come from his character but they are all (and I mean ALL) in the trailers.
It is such a shame that what could easily have been a great film was so hugely screwed up because the people behind it were fixated on the technology when they should have been paying attention elsewhere. DWA delivered one of its best films last year with a well voice-cast, smart, funny, genre-spinning animation – Kung Fu Panda. That was the promise Monsters Vs Aliens had, but they delivered an uninspired Over The Hedge-a-like!
On the plus side it was better than last year’s computer-animated low, Igor!
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