D+
Frank Loesser might have been right in observing that mediocrity is not a mortal sin, but if so, among the current glut of computer-animated kids’ movies it’s become the most prevalent of venial ones. The latest proof is afforded by “Planet 51,” a movie so flat and derivative that it seems to have been desperately cobbled together from other, better pictures.
The basic premise—in which an American astronaut lands on an alien planet and becomes the target of its military, only to be befriended by a teen—is basically a reverse version of “E.T.” (One shot is even a spoof of the bike-against-the-moon one from that movie.) But preening, posturing Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker (voiced very broadly by Dwayne Johnson) is a Buzz Lightyear clone, and his unlikely protector Lem (bland Justin Long), like the rest of his species, looks rather like he stepped out of the pages of a Dr. Seuss book.
Baker lands in the town where Lem lives, a place that for some unexplained reason is like a fifties U.S. suburb, down to the pop music they listen to and the kind of junky sci-fi movies they watch—a series called “Humaniacs” that helps explain why they’re all so terrified of an extraterrestrial. And just to touch all the bases, Baker’s accompanied by a cute-as-a-button land rover that had been sent to the planet earlier. The resemblance to Wall-E is certainly not accidental. And at the end, one will even find echoes of “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.” To make the dependencies even clearer, James Brett’s music score mimics cuts from the pictures that serve as “inspiration” so that nobody could miss the allusions.
As far as plot is concerned, the movie is virtually one long chase, which worked wonderfully in the classic Warner Brothers Looney Tunes shorts but would need a lot more imagination and energy to sustain a 90-minute feature. There are long dead periods throughout “Planet 51,” when the picture nearly crawls to a stop. Many of them involve General Grawl (gruff Gary Oldman), the hard-as-nails honcho who’s out to catch Baker, and Professor Kipple (surprisingly unfunny John Cleese), a scientist who’s anxious to extract the alien’s brain for study and is convinced that “Humaniacs” is right about the fact that Baker can turn his fellow citizens into mindless zombies. But Lem’s infatuation with next-door neighbor Neera (vapid Jessica Biel) is pretty dull, too, although Seann William Scott is better as Skiff, Lem’s obligatory goofy best pal, who bonds with the rover.
Everything in the movie happens exactly as you’d expect, and though there are occasional moments that demonstrate flashes of wit, they’re few and far between—a real disappointment considering that the script was written by one of the guys responsible for “Shrek.” (But one shouldn’t blame a single writer in the case of a picture that has no fewer than four “idea” men, three directors and fourteen producers.) And the animation is pedestrian, with largely featureless character representation and nondescript backgrounds.
This is apparently the first feature from Ilion, a Spanish company that presumably hopes to use it as their entrée into the international animation world. It’s an inauspicious debut; even the kids at whom “Planet 51” are aimed with find it a distinctly tedious attempt at an outer-space adventure.