Review: PLANET 51

PLANET 51 would be a good film, if it was an original idea, wasn’t so long, and had a cast that wasn’t just going through the motions with zero confidence. Yes, it other words, PLANET 51 is not a very good movie. It’s your basic fish out of water tale, but from a sci-fi point of view, with the human landing on an alien world where everyone thinks he’s some kind of monster. Captain Charles T. Baker (Dwayne Johnson) lands on Planet 51, a planet that seems to be mirror Earth in the late 1950s early 1960s. It isn’t long before he’s mistaken for a brain sucking, organ eating alien and is chased off, and eventually bumps into Lem (Justin Long), a young alien who works at the local planetarium.

Lem is of course your average teenager, trying to win over the heart of Neera (Jessica Biel), the girl next door, and would have won her heart by now if it weren’t for Captain Baker’s mishap. In other words, Justin Long is playing almost every character he’s ever played, just as a green alien. I guess that’s appropriate. Well of course with an Alien on the loose the entire planet is soon flung into chaos and fear, which is where General Grawl (Gary Oldman) and Professor Kipple (John Cleese) come in to save the day, but end up just driving the chaos even further.  Now Lem and Captain Baker have to find a way to get Baker back onto his ship before it leaves without him, stranding him on this very familiar, but still alien world. A lot of slap stick humor follows and we get an ending that you know is coming by the very nature of the film.

PLANET 51 doesn’t take any real risks and the animation is pretty outdated as far as quality is concerned. But the worst part is easily the acting. You have people like John Cleese giving the most boring performance of his entire career and Gary Oldman in a role so bland, with absolutely no emotion what so ever that you’d be hard pressed to believe it’s actually him. General Grawl doesn’t sound like Gary Oldman at all, which is a real shame since the part could have been so evil, and diabolical, but instead he’s just your average military character.

The humor in Planet 51 was another huge let down, because none of it is funny. The entire film’s comedy is so watered down and safe that it makes Saturday morning cartoons look edgy. I couldn’t believe how dumb some of it was. Kids might enjoy it, but adults will be bored  into a coma. Expect kids to really enjoy the character Rover, who is essentially Captain Baker’s robotic dog, and maybe the most enjoyable part of the film because of how well animated it is.

I can’t get behind this movie in any way or recommend it to anyone. There are so many better animated films out there that would entertain a much wider audience. This is a huge waste of time and money and easily one of the drabbest films of the year. This is what happens when a film is directed by three people. PLANET 51 gets 2 out of 5 stars.