Eye Candy #219 - "Monsters vs. Aliens"

Monsters vs. Aliens:  An extremely clever animated movie, part alien film homage, part action adventure, about a team of monsters employed by the US military that have to fend off an alien invasion.  Susan (Reese Witherspoon), a young bride-to-be, is struck by a meteor from outer space on her wedding day, resulting in her growing to gigantic size.  She is then empressed by the military into a team of monsters, including the Missing Link (Will Arnett), the blob (the ubiquitous Seth Rogen), Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), and Insectosaurus, and has to defend the world against Gallaxhar (Riann Wilson), a narcissistic alien conquerer.  In addition to riffing on alien movies like “Close Encounters” and “ET”, we also get “Beverly Hills Cop”, “Dr. Strangelove”, and even “The Great Escape“, so it’s obviously not a film just for kids.  Genuinely funny a great deal of the time, this film really exceeded my expectations, and I have a relatively low Seth Rogen threshold right now.  Sure, it doesn’t have an exceedingly original plot, but I’m okay with that because it’s a CARTOON and it has fun doing what it does, and I appreciate that. Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”