Planet 51

Review by Jason Donner

Out on an alien planet, a mysterious spacecraft lands and a single human astronaut gets out and scares the heebie-jeebies out of the green-skinned population.  It's the reversal of the age-old invader from space movie and the premise I've just presented to you sounds clever enough to base a 90 minute cartoon on, right?

Wrong.  Wrongo.  Wronooringo.

While the premise of Planet 51 sounds exciting and innovative, the movie takes it and doesn't do a darn thing with it other than crack a few jokes based on references that children won't understand, crack a few more jokes about anal probes and penises (yes, penises), engages in pointless chase after chase, assaults you with annoying characters, and presents you with a plot that progresses exactly how you think it would. 

Planet 51 is just an awful movie through and through assembled by those imagination-deficient Hollywood hacks who believe that the only reason people go to animated films is for the bright moving colors.

This movie doesn't even have the ambition to make you hate it properly.  A least excruciating fare like Shark Tale elicited an emotional reaction on some level (rage); Planet 51 acts like just existing is some sort of achievement. 

It's like eating a mayonnaise sandwich and being told you have to enjoy it.

Dwayne Johnson (who is tired of calling himself The Rock apparently) voices the primary human character who I have already forgotten the name of (and don't care to look it up).  Not content to simply flush his career down the toilet in countless awful live action appearances, Johnson now wants us to hate the mere existence of his voice as well and, boy, is he off to a good start.  His character is irritating, stupid, and I was actually rooting for the aliens to capture and dissect him.

Seann William Scott, however, wins the award for the most off-putting contribution to the movie as another character I don't care to look up the name of.  An awful, awful supporting character who you honestly have to wonder why he was written into the movie in the first place other than the coveted Jar Jar Binks buffoonish companion with an overly squeaky voice and a tragic aversion to sudden heart attacks.

Justin Long voices Glar (and, yes, I'm surprised I remember that one) who is the one character I didn't want to hit in the face with a brick, but when confronted by so many throwaway pop culture gags and annoying co-stars, even someone who isn't completely annoying is eclipsed by everything that is.

Planet 51 is just... bad.  So bad that it's beyond hate or contempt, just bad in that its existence is somehow offensive even though the movie isn't as terrible as some of its ilk.   The fact that it was created without love and without any ambition to be anything more than 90 minutes of adequacy in return for money offends me on an artistic level.  You could have fed starving children with the money spent to create this collection of nothingness... at least then something would have mattered at the end.