Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

The start of this film is really shaky, its unfunny, looks dull and the plot zips along too fast, blink and you miss the whole film concept.Luckily it morphs into another brilliant Dreamworks animated flick, at first the characters don't really appeal and they kinda look a bit lame but as the film progresses you really dig them and the idea behind their looks. They have all been crafted from the classic black n white horror genre ranks and at a first glance I didn't like them but as the film moves forward you do notice how cool they are.'B.O.B' is obviously a take on the Blob creature probably from the Steve McQueen flick, 'Link' is a kind of 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' and probably the best of the monsters with his dialog and good looking cgi on his scales (am I the only one who thinks Michael Keaton with his wild n wacky 'Beetlejuice' voice would have been perfect for this character?).'Dr Cockroach' was a twist on ' The Fly' monster and for me the weakest monster in the gang, 'Gallaxhar' is the alien enemy and a nice combination of the classic 50's/60's UFO invasion flicks (think 'Mars Attacks' too) and finally 'Insectosaurus' is taken from the Jap monster mash films and 'Godzilla'.The film isn't THAT funny at the start or for the first 30min really, it comes alive after the gang fights the giant robot to be honest, before then its a little weak. The film does offer allot of little funny moments from then on eg. 'B.O.B' waving his jello at 'Derek' at the end and when he tries to chat the jello up earlier on LOL!Rainn Wilson makes the alien enemy much better than I thought at first with some cracking little remarks here and there.....'Quadrant 4? lame', and you gotta laugh at the US president and the 'Dr Strangelove' type boardroom scenes hehe.Its a film of two halves really, the beginning is weak but the latter half is great fun, as said it all perks up once they fight the giant robot in SF, it whips along with no time for rest and you really enjoy it. Kudos to Dreamworks for the look of the film which is really really nice, its amazing what they can do these days, this film still keeps me in the Dreamworks camp overall. Pixar still hold the ultimate hand with 'Toy Story' but this was really good, Dreamworks are closing the gap slowly.