Planet 51 squanders an interesting premise with an overly familiar storyline, stock characters, and humor that alternates between curious and potentially offensive.
Planet 51 squanders an interesting premise with an overly familiar storyline, stock characters, and humor that alternates between curious and potentially offensive.
An American astronaut believing himself to be the first person ever to set foot on Planet 51 gets the shock of his life in this animated adventure comedy featuring the voices of Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel, John Cleese, and Gary Oldman. Captain Charles "Chuck" Baker (voice of Johnson) was on a mission to boldly go where no man had gone before, a remote celestial body dubbed Planet 51. The scientific community had surmised that Planet 51 was uninhabited, so when Captain Baker steps out of his
spacecraft to discover a race of tiny green people living in quaint communities reminiscent of 1950s America, he can't quite believe his eyes. Unfortunately, the tiny extraterrestrials suffer from a universal fear that their utopian community will one day be overrun by alien invaders...just like the extra-large astronaut who now stands before them. As General Grawl (voice of Gary Oldman) and Professor Kipple (voice of John Cleese) attempt to capture the peaceful visitor so they can dissect him and learn more about his anatomy, Captain Baker must count on his robot companion, "Rover," and his new friend, Lem, in order to navigate this strange new world and find a way back home before it's too late. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
The movie as a whole isn't exactly ground-breaking, and some of the humor tanks. But it has enough action, laughs and candy-hued visuals to satisfy the target audience without plunging grown-ups into despair.
While certainly diverting, its overly frantic attempts at humour, pointless homages to other films and lack of charm mean it falls some way short. It's not terrible but neither is it memorable.
Just how much of this will be appreciated by children is questionable, but the film is clearly intended to keep them happy with lashings of colour, movement and cheesy jokes while older, diehard geeks can enjoy all the reference spotting.
Little kids who've never seen this story before might get a kick out of it and its bold colours. Parents will be yawning and looking at their watches. At least G-Force dared you to hate it; this just dares you to stay awake.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say Planet 51 was written by a bunch of monkeys...who were trapped in a room with some typewriters. Surprisingly, the works of Shakespeare are the only texts they haven't blatantly ripped off.
The whole storyline is something everyone will know they have seen before. Some jokes were funny, others were embarassing and it treads too much into E.T territory Resultingly, Planet 51 isn't good family entertainment. The animation is pretty good but the characters are either cardboard cut out or borrowed from other
better films.
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