Hollywire's Film Writer Sets World Record!

Posted on April 15, 2009 - 2:43am by michael Okay, ladies and gentlemen, check this out. I just watched Monsters vs. Aliens, and now I am about to set a world record for the movie review that invokes the names of more previous movies than any other movie review that has ever been written in the history of mankind. With luck, I imagine this will surpass, for sheer public amazement, even the incredible 2004 world record of the oldest Jewish oral surgeon ever to travel across America on a bicycle without getting a flat tire. I’m gonna be famous!

And why would I attempt to do such a thing? Well, I believe in the theory that one of the most important ingredients for a successful animated film that is good for all ages is that it has to be full of clever homages to previous films that will be as much fun to point out as anything in the rest of the movie. So I guess you could say that if I’m successful in my world record attempt, it’s safe to assume that Monsters vs. Aliens is a pretty successful movie. Personally I thought the movie was awesome regardless of whatever fame I might achieve in the near future, but here’s hoping, right? If anyone from the Guinness Book is reading this, give me a call so we can get this thing off the ground!

First of all, here’s the story. A meteorite has been detected heading toward earth, and scientists determine that it is going to impact in Modesto, California, which reminds me of the astonishing accuracy of the scientists in Knowing, who managed to calculate and actual intersection where the impending object would hit. Due to its trajectory, the object slams into the ground near a church, nearly ruining the wedding of a Susan Murphy, who is about to marry her Anchor Man fiance Derek, who dreams of leaving his lowly TV existence for bigger and better thing, as did Nicholas Cage in The Weather Man and Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty.

[caption id="attachment_27742" align="alignleft" width="336" caption=""Come on honey, what's the matter? Fresno!""][/caption]

Much to Susan's chagrin, Derek has scrapped their honeymoon plans to Paris in favor of a romantic trip to beautiful Fresno, California which, as you know, has only been mentioned in a movie twice before, in Thelma & Louise and Con Air. Neither mention was very flattering, but no matter. Derek is planning to enter the 55th television market on the world famous Channel 23 in Fresno when  Susan has the misfortune to have a meteor land on her, though luckily she suffers no real injury other than a hyper-acceleration of her pituitary gland. In probably the movie's most obvious reference, her character is lifted right out of Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, although my understanding is that her actual height in the movie is 49'11".

The military is called as she grows several feet per second, and miraculously they manage to arrive in about 20 seconds, helicopters and all, reminding me of the response (and the General) from The Iron Giant and the arrival of alien life forms hitching a ride to earth on meteors and such in tons and tons of movies, from the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers and modern remake The Invasion (which was a lot better than expected) to classic monster movies like It Came From Outer Space and War of the Worlds, 80s classics like The Last Starfighter, Enemy Mine, the bizarre sci-fi romance Starman, and of course Deadly Spawn (seriously did you see this thing? Hilarious!). Modern audiences might be more likely to notice more recent references, like the sporadically amusing 2001 comedy Evolution and the morbidly amusing horror comedy Slither (this one, of course, will likely be lost on the kids in the audience), although maybe it's a sign of my age that the first thing I thought of when Susan started growing was that guy who turned into grass in the outstandingly stupid 1982 Stephen King horror movie Creepshow. What a mess that thing was. Anyway, getting back to more specific homages, Susan is then tied down in a remake of the same scene in Gulliver's Travels, and pretty soon You might also find yourself remembering the hilarious bad movie adaptations of the imprisonment of King Kong.

[caption id="attachment_27743" align="alignright" width="221" caption="The U.S. government's most top secret weapons!"][/caption]

So it seems that the U.S. government has been covering up its monster research so well that even the conspiracy theorists (do you mind if I count that one? Thanks!) obsessed with governmental cover-ups of Area 51 and other alien landings haven't even noticed it yet. Once Susan turns into a giant, she is captured and imprisoned with other monsters who have been captured and are being secretly studied, and for convenience, the government renames her "Ginormica."

Her cellmates include "The Missing Link" (a lizard-like creature with a Cheshire grin who looks like a cross between Godzilla, The Swamp Thing, and Will Arnett), Dr. Cockroach Ph. D, a bulgy-eyed insect in a lab coat who makes me think of Jeff Goldblum from The Fly had he not screwed up his experiment so badly. He also reminded me of "Mant," the movie-within-a-movie in the classic monster movie parody Matinee, but has some of the same mannerisms of Abe Sapien from Hellboy and Hellboy II. And of course, we can't forget about B.O.B., who is not really an homage to The Blob, they just animated it right into the movie, took a letter out of its name and replaced it with Seth Rogen's guttural voicing. Nice work! Oh and there's also a gigantic hamster that must be the cutest representation of a movie monster since the baby in King Kong Lives except that it's the size of a blimp with a brain the size of a walnut and takes its voice from the pod-racing scene in The Phantom Menace. I'm pretty sure LucasFilm has that sound copyrighted...

All of these Little Monsters seem pretty harmless, of course, but soon we learn that with the meteorite came a monstrous robotic alien that looks like a Pac Man ghost with one eye. There's a great scene where the military and government approach the monster where it's partially buried in the ground, and no one less than the President of the United States personally approaches the beast to attempts to make contact, reminding me of that brief scene from the beginning of Troy ("Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn't that be a sight...").

[caption id="attachment_27744" align="alignleft" width="210" caption="Seriously, take away one eye and this is the alien robot..."][/caption]

After playing the theme song from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the helicopters leading the giant rodent around with a billboard of lights is also a throw-back to Close Encounters), Mr. President then breaks it down and churns out that classic 80s song from Beverly Hills Cop. You know the one I'm talking about.  You can, of course, insert your own connection to some kind of criticism of various presidents portrayed in movies like W. or even Frost/Nixon, although it would be an interesting debate about who exactly is being ridiculed in the president's exit, where he is dragged on board Air Force 2 throwing up Nixon's two-handed peace sign and yelling, "I'm brave! I'm a brave president!"

As is all too often the case, things don't go exactly according to plan, and unfortunately the government's best and brightest could only come up with such questions as "What would Oprah do?" and "Can we transport the U.S. to a safer planet?" so the government is forced to bring the monsters out of their half century of hiding to save mankind from the ravages of this robotic beast, leading to one of the best lines in the movie -

Missing Link: "Has the Earth gotten warmer? That would be really great to know that. That would be a very convenient truth."

[caption id="attachment_27745" align="alignright" width="339" caption="See what I mean?"][/caption]

Complicating matters is that a evil genius named Galaxar has a Hitleresque scheme to destroy the Earth and create his own planet called Galaxar (remember Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull? "Guess what I'm gonna call it!") using an element called quantonium, which he's trying to recover, and it's up to our bizarre team of monster heroes to come to the aid of a race of people who have imprisoned them for decades.

The movie is presented in breath-taking 3D, although 3D remains nothing more than a gimmick. Many people think it's the way of the future ("thewayofthefuture...thewayofthefuture...thewayofthefuture..."), but I just can't see that happening. I wonder if this is the same way that people felt who doubted that sound film was the way of the future back in the 1930s, and that those of us resisting the coming of the 3D revolution are no different from the people (like Charlie Chaplin) who insisted that "talkies" were nothing but a passing fad. Time will tell. But regardless of the fact that the 3D doesn't add anything to the story other than a shiny distraction in an already impressively animated and acted film, it's clear that everyone involved with the movie had a blast with it, and it's hard not to have a great time along with them.

[caption id="attachment_27746" align="alignleft" width="262" caption="Where's a Visine cannon when you need one??"][/caption]

But like I said, the movie is packed with homages and clever throw-backs to great films of the past, and I would hate to ruin the experience of looking for them yourself, but here are the ones that I found in some form or other and haven't mentioned yet - Star Trek ("Code Nemoy!"), the War of the Worlds remake, E.T. ("E.T. Go Home!!"), Dr. Strangelove, Jarhead, Full Metal Jacket (trust me on those ones, they're in there...), Coneheads, Monster Mash, Innerspace, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Journey to the Center of the Earth, TRON, Scooby Doo, The Clone Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey and hence WALL-E, The Twilight Zone, I, Robot, The Fifth Element, Antz, A Bug's Life, The Quiet Earth, Spaceballs (this one's actually mentioned in dialogue), Eagle Eye (but not in a bad way), I Am Legend, Ghostbusters, Vertigo, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with the rooftop chasing, Monsters, Inc. obviously, Aliens obviously, The Rock, Bicentennial Man (yeah I said it), , Independence Day ("A deflector shield. Typical!"), Edward Scissorhands, License to Kill, Police Academy 4 (Okay, this one is just because Derek's exclamation "It never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever occurred to me" reminded me of Commandant Lassard's sign "Have a very, very, very, very, very nice day."), and of course, maybe the most important of all, Super Ducktales! Classic!

Happy hunting!

[caption id="attachment_27748" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="4.5 Beans out of 5."][/caption]