33. Monsters Vs. Aliens
You want absurd dumb fun? Well you got it. Ho’boy do you got it. Here it is. Pure and distilled.
I would honestly say the only thing this film takes seriously is the character development of our main character Susan (Reese Witherspoon) aka Ginormica. That’s the kind of thing that edges this film out over something like the Bee Movie though. The fact that there is a genuine heart at the center of it does go a long way.
Bee Movie has the edge in terms of being fucking ridiculous though. None of the other films on this list will be able to beat it at that but this one takes it almost as far in a few places.
Susan is about to get married to a news anchor named Derek (Paul Rudd) who is very, very into his career and changes the plans the two of them have to go on honeymoons based entirely on whether or not it will advance his career. He does this on their wedding day too which is quite the dick move but he still doesn’t come off as all THAT bad at the start, I guess.
That is until Susan’s life is changed when she ends up getting hit by a meteor. Turns out, she doesn’t die… but in the church she turns into a 50 foot tall woman and her hair turns white. She’s officially a monster and as such the government comes to tranquilize her and lock her in Area 51, a facility where they happen to have other monsters stationed as well.
She meets General W.R Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) who informs her that she’s going to be stationed there alongside the others. There’s Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a scientist who turned himself into a half man, half cockroach person after an experiment gone wrong. There’s the Missing Link (Will Arnett), a fish-man hybrid from who knows how many thousands of years ago who has a macho personality but is noticeably unable to back it up in a lot of scenes. There’s B.O.B. (Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate) who was the result of… a tomato being injected with candy syrup that I guess was experimental enough to create an idiot gelatin with a single eyeball with the voice of Seth Rogan.
Lastly, there’s Insectosaurus, who is a bug that got hit by radiation and grew into a giant monster. For some reason they decided to get Jimmy Kimmel to do the monster grunts he makes. Figure that one out.
It seems like they’re just stuck there to be in captivity. This place is referred to as a prison multiple times by Link to the point where it really stands out how unfair it is that they’ve done nothing wrong and are just kept in cages despite that.
However, an alien named Gallaxar (Rainn Wilson) comes to Earth looking for Quantonium. This substance was inside the meteor that hit Susan and went inside her body. This leads to a war specifically against the U.S Government because of course it does. Negotiations for peace collapse when President Stephen Colbert makes his way towards it and plays the Dance Frog meme song on a keyboard. All that does is generate another delicious meme for the internet unfortunately.
So General Monger suggests he uses the monsters he has in captivity to fight the aliens off. It doesn't make a ton of sense considering all their weapons were useless but it ends up working so what do I know?
That’s basically the plot. It’s pretty simple, all things considered, but the thing that makes the film stand out are the things that contrast and compliment its general tone.
Everything complimenting it's tone is all the comedy. As said before, it doesn’t let up. It takes the ever loving piss out of the Government, the presidency, and government institutions in a way that I couldn’t help but smile at. The absurd security behind simply entering a government meeting room that requires you to scan everything on your body, including your bare ass, or how simply mentioning Area 51 has someone off screen firing a tranquilizer dart into your neck are all great.
However, the incredibly lax security surrounding instances involving the president are also hilarious. He literally has two GIANT red buttons installed in a wall behind their meeting room. One press of the button on the right sends all their nuclear weapons launching at once. The other button gets him a latte.
Hell, the fact that the president is voiced by Stephen Colbert is a joke in and of itself and it was one I was able to experience the origin of first hand. It may be outdated now but I did watch the Colbert Report when I was younger and the jokes made about making Stephen Colbert president were coming in fast and loose due to George W. Bush still being in power and everyone hating him for the terrible job he was doing.
The jokes surrounding the other monsters are all pretty good too. B.O.B is especially funny due to how strangely delusional he’s made out to be. I don’t even really remember how he tricked himself into believing he was the one who had a relationship with Derek but I remember it being funny. His mind is messed up and he has no brain.
The Missing Link does nothing in the fight on the Golden Gate bridge and it’s pointed out by all the characters too. Susan did most of, if not, all the work by fighting it off. Dr. Cockroach managed to short-circuit the robot a bit and even B.O.B helped clear traffic so that the people could get by. Insectosaurus blinded it with its weird webbing snot too. Link tried to attack it but got knocked out by its forcefield and needed to be saved, which ruined his macho pride.
It felt like the set-up to an arc was happening there but it’s never really paid off well. He does end up fighting off the aliens in the end alongside the others but it’s not like he’s given any specific moment or a spectacular amount of focus. It’s was more of a team effort.
As stated before, the real heart and focus of mostly all the development does indeed go to Susan. She was about to be married to a guy who loves his career more than her and when she comes back as a giant woman he dumps her. Granted, it’s understandable that he doesn’t want to be with her anymore but she processes it as them working together to figure out how to fix her. Instead of mulling over that idea he immediately and legitimately wants no part of it. He doesn’t even really consider giving it a try like her parents want to.
There was still leeway to excuse it left but it evaporates by the end when he comes back to get an interview with her for the chance at a promotion due to her saving the world. Then he’s okay with being with her. So yeah, fuck him.
Her journey from wanting to run away from this life to embracing it as a hero to the world is a good one. It was awesome seeing her destroy Galaxar’s statue so that the Quantonium he stole from her would fall onto her body and allow her to regain her size and power. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if it didn’t just kill her but seeing as how the meteor didn’t I doubt a giant glass ball would.
Galaxar is a villain. He’s an evil villain who destroyed his own planet and wants to set-up shop on Earth to invade it and experiment on the humans and be evil. There isn’t much to him and that’s intentional. There’s even a joke about how he’s going to explain his backstory but while he’s doing so, he’s getting his body pressed into a machine so that it can clone him. Each time he’s about to say something that sounds like it’d be of substance the machine presses down on him and cuts him off. His backstory doesn’t matter. He’s just a generic monster movie villain here to kill everyone. He even has a pretty basic and generic alien design, honestly.
This film is a very clear and obvious send up to old monster movies and alien serials of the 1950s and junk. It does that by baking itself in that kind of feeling and that’s also part of it’s obvious charm when it comes to the comedy. Like, when you have a general just say that they’re going to sick five monsters on a giant alien robot and the rebuttal to someone asking if that’s a good plan is to call them a nerd and give them a wedgie then you know it’s intention is to just BE a romp and not much else.
Like, the way they called that one dude "Nerd" made it sound like it was his actual name. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was given the nature of this film. General W.R Monger is literally just a cute way of saying Warmonger.
The film was good, certainly. As a love letter to those old films it’s inspired by, it works. Also, it does succeed at giving Susan a satisfying character arc. I want to say it's a little underrated in a sense but to be honest I can’t say it accomplishes a ton past what I pointed out. It hovers around being average to slightly above average for being as funny as it is and allowing at least one character to be taken seriously. I won't go around declaring it's a must-see film but I appreciate it regardless.
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17 Mar 2025 00:20 CET
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