Monsters vs. Aliens vs. Snot vs. Poop

Monsters vs. Aliens cuts a wide swath through comedy. One character is called General W.R. Monger, like warmonger, while a brainy scientist says the exclamatory phrase “by Hawkins’ chair,” an offbeat reference to physicist Stephen Hawking, who’s mapped the galaxy from a wheelchair nearly all his life. Brainy stuff for sure. And then a giant insect shoots snot rockets from its nose.

At times, the animated film can’t decide who the material is geared for: the kiddies being brought to see it or the adults doing the bringing. In one scene military experts are looking for science experts when someone says, “call India.” Many adults won’t get the joke — that India produces some of the world’s most gifted science and engineering minds — let alone children, who spent the car ride to the theater checking their nostrils for space invaders. To counterbalance that gag, the president of the United States goes from DEFCON 1 to “Code Brown” because he’s soiled his slacks, and a blob of ooze has to be reminded that “boys don’t have boobies.”

How frustrating this is! Last week I had a conversation with several people who wouldn’t have taken their grandchildren to see the magical Coraline, a far superior movie, had they known two buxom characters strip down to their undies to do an innocuous trapeze act. Yet here, the president poops himself to comic effect and I betcha no one complains. Better animated films (especially those by Pixar) balance the humor more precisely: The jokes are just smart enough for adults and just silly enough for children without going overboard in either direction.

Here I am, though, halfway through a review and I’ve yet to talk plot: An alien super villain tries to colonize the planet so the government sends in monsters it has collected to suppress the threat. The monsters are the fishy Missing Link (Will Arnett), the human roach Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a gelatinous blob named B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a giant furball called Insectasaurus and the 50-foot-tall woman, whose “official government-sanctioned monster name” is Ginormica, but call her Susan (Reese Witherspoon). They live in an underground government facility so vast and labyrinthine that it epitomizes Eisenhower’s definition of the Military Industrial Complex.

Susan is the central character and the way the movie plots her arc from bride-to-be to Ginormica is effective, if also kinda sad. I felt bad for Susan, the way she’s treated by her moronic TV weatherman fiancé, the way she’s hidden in a secret government facility, the way she loses everything except the friendship of the other monsters. She comes into her own, though, and eventually tussles with a giant robot in San Francisco — a fantastic scene — and then the alien geekus Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson). The sequel must give her a new groom, and maybe he’ll be as tall as her.

I must also comment on the voice acting, which I often fault in animated movies that include celebrity voices. These voices are perfect for these roles, especially Rogen, a convincing dunce, and Witherspoon, whose chirpy tones are just colorful enough for those animated frames.

Some of the humor is clearly of the lowest-common denominator kind — anything with snot or poop — but some of it is pretty clever: A headline about the alien invasion reads “U-F-Uh-Oh.” A man scans his iris, thumbprint, palmprint, elbow, tongue and butt to gain access to a war room that looks like the war room from Dr. Strangelove. B.O.B. the blob is capable of all kinds of contortions and bizarre visual gags, one of which involves the hilarious, context-free line, “I taste ham,” the meaning of which I will let you discover.

Really, though, Monsters vs. Aliens is a rather mellow spoof. The monsters are mutated devices from other movies: The Fly, The Blob, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Thing, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Cloverfield. Notice the clever Vertigo parody as Susan runs across rooftops in San Francisco and dangles from a rain gutter only to realize she’s nearly as tall as the building itself. Or how the alien’s computer is accessed using one of those step pads from that dancing arcade game. Or how the president communicates with a giant robot using the musical notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and when that doesn’t work he busts out with the Beverly Hills Cop theme on his Casio keyboard. Try to listen for the really obscure line about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

These are amusing jokes, but it all relates back to my original point: Will children get them? I think not, which is why Monsters vs. Aliens is peppered with potty humor as well, maybe as a backup. The animation looks good, the action flows well, the monsters are likeable (especially B.O.B., who falls in love with a Jell-O mold), but the film’s sense of humor needs a narrower focus. Or just less snot.

This review originally ran in the West Valley View March 27, 2009.

Stare at this photo and you WILL be whacked

Photographer, forgive me. I don't know where I found this, but I'm going to risk copyright violations to post it just because it makes me laugh. And after laughing I have this unsettling urge to enter into the Witness Protection Program where I can enjoy my egg noodles and ketchup and not fear men like these two. This picture of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci is almost unreal, like it was invented in some designer's head. It's just too perfect: Pesci looks like he's ready to stab you in the throat with a fountain pen, and De Niro is apparently doing an impression of De Niro. Shortly after this photo was taken they beat a man to an oozy pulp in a cornfield and then buried him while he was still breathing. And where has Pesci been all these years; he needs a new movie. In any case, this photo is a classic.

Rashida Jones, your day has come

The Office is one of the most inventive shows on TV right now, but it's not perfect. Look at the blunders: they booted (maybe temporarily) HR goofball Holly Flax, turned Jan Levinson into a breastfeeding Godzilla, booted Toby only to bring him back and then turned Angela into the office whore, and Angela is bizarre but not a whore. Unforgivable, though, is what they did to Rashida Jones who played Karen Filippelli, who was Jim's girlfriend throughout Season 3.

After a more than 20 episodes of Karen's delightful presence, Jim goes to New York City for a job interview, realizes he loves Pam and then leaves poor Karen "standing by some fountain." The writers had set up a cute little storyline with Jim and Karen, and Karen wasn't just the "other girl" to receptionist Pam Beesly but an important force in the Scranton branch, where she pulled her weight and added some much-needed sexiness to the stuffiness of Dunder Mifflin. They brought her back for several episodes, including a recent one in which she's pregnant, but it's not the same as having her on the series as a regular.

Maybe Rashida will get the last laugh, though. With Jim selling Blackberry's and Pam being all cute and Pammy, Rashida's co-starring in the new romantic comedy — or maybe, bromantic comedy — I Love You, Man, where she's set to marry Paul Rudd, who doesn't have any friends eligible for the best man duties. The movie, which also stars terminal penis flapper Jason Segel, opens next week, and next month her new show, Parks and Recreation from the makers of The Office, debuts on NBC. Before all this, the only she'd been seen in after Jim dumped her was the Web shorts "Puppies" and then "Kittens," where her and the contagiously cute Natalie Portman solved the economic crisis with furry little animals.

I go through phases when it comes to celebrity crushes. I've gone through the Natalie Portman phase several times. I just ended a Zooey Deschanel phase when I heard she's engaged to some douchebag singer who thinks he's Bob Dylan. Rashida Jones ... your phase starts now. Her characters are hilarious, her timing is perfect, her look is classy ... oh and she's freakin' hot. Movie and television poducers: More Rashida, please.

Watchmen: Overrated comic geekery

Last year The Dark Knight opened up the comic book universe for the masses. And now Watchmen slams the door shut and retreats to the basement to geek out.

Just as I was getting fond of the comic book movies — I had forgiven Spider-Man 3, adored Hellboy 2, and was in awe of Dark Knight — here’s one that proves why comics are an acquired taste and why they fluctuate in popularity so wildly within every generation.

Nevertheless, though, comics — especially graphic novels, a term which is overused — are still big. As a testament to Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Time magazine named it one of 100 important novels — list buddies include The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. The graphic novel may be brilliant, but the film is a convoluted mess, a tired and ridiculous port of the source material. No wonder Alan Moore, who looks kinda like Karl Marx on Watchmen's back cover, had his name removed from the film credits.

Before going any further let's settle some business: I’m reviewing the film, not the graphic novel, which I will leave untouched for its many fans, those who’ve seen the sun the last decade and those who haven’t — or, more bluntly, those who’ve had sex with a real person and those who haven’t. For people who haven’t read the book, like myself, don’t let anyone tell you that reading it is mandatory. The film negates the need to read the book, because, let’s face it, if we wanted to read we’d go to the library, not the movie theater. Besides, a film is obligated to work on its own terms within the medium. If it requires further reading to appreciate or “get,” then it’s not a film, but an appendix to the book and that’s just hooey. That goes for all films, not just Watchmen.

The movie exists in a strange alternate universe: not only did Richard Nixon not resign but he was elected to a third term; masked superheroes emerge as social avengers and occasionally as troublemakers; the Soviets are ready to launch nukes at the United States (I guess that part is familiar); and blimps circle the skies for no apparent reason. It’s 1985, but it feels like the 2019 of Blade Runner.

Watchmen begins like most noir stories: in the rain with a grim voiceover narration. The voice is Rorschach, a gravel-throat superhero detective. His face is covered with a mask stained with mutating, but symmetrical, inkblots — I kept trying to notice a pattern or maybe recurring shapes to no avail. Rorschach is tracking down leads on a murdered superhero, a retired weapons expert and deadbeat named Comedian, who was thrown out a window from a height I wouldn’t recommend jumping from. His investigation leads him to other superheroes: hip brunette Silk Spectre, a Clark Kentish dweeb who used to be Nite Owl, the billionaire conglomerate Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan, a glowing-blue transcendentalist who might actually be God, or maybe just his proxy.

These characters — with exception to Dr. Manhattan; more on him later — are not super as we might think of superheroes. They have no special abilities, no mutated DNA, no comet crystals or krypton allergies. They’re more or less like Batman: inventive gadget designers, lethal in a brawl and all-around street smart. The fact that the masked crimefighters co-exist with normal everyday folks is apparently what made the graphic novel so compelling. I wasn’t so compelled with the idea here, mainly because the superhero ideals don’t really exist. They talk about truth, justice and the American way, but they don’t actually go out and live under that credo. Their whole routine feels like a fetish game of dress-up, one that they hardly take serious. When Silk Spectre and Nite Owl do return to their superhero moonlighting, all they can muster is a post-coitus jailbreak for the ever-deranged and now maskless Rorschach, who tells the inmates, “I’m not locked in here with you; you’re locked in here with me.” The scene is fun, but it accentuates that there’s no dynamic between who these people are and what they represent.

I’ve yet to mention a story arc, which is intentional since it’s so often abandoned for all the comic minutiae. The plot, though, involves the murder of Comedian and the devious implications behind it. Rorschach, the only one who senses a nefarious scheme, pushes forward even as the film skids into everyone’s origin stories, which might be effective tangents in a film with more focus or maybe a shorter running time (165 minutes). Instead the film spins out of control with each new series of flashbacks, some of which reveal how Vietnam was won (Dr. Manhattan microwaved the North Vietnamese Army into gibs) and others that provide us with the emotional anchor points of the characters’ lives (Rorschach killing a child abductor). All this is going on while the end game, which might be nuclear war with the Russkies, draws closer with no clear path through the nonsense.

This leads us into Watchmen’s most glaring error: Dr. Manhattan, probably one of the most poorly written superheroes ever written onto a screen. (I’ve since read Roger Ebert’s review, and was confounded as to why he didn’t scrutinize this blue guy more.) Here’s a character that draws comparisons to deity, yet is so consistently stupid that I think he was married to Nick Lachey for several years. He has the power to obliterate every nuclear weapon on the planet, yet he teleports himself and his ever-present wiener to Mars where he meditates on a glass spaceship because … well, because why the hell not. And when the doomsday clock is about to strike for mankind, he pukes poetry about the human condition and asks rhetorical philosophical questions that contradict everything that’s been established from the simplest metaphysical level right on up. This is a misguided character in a chronically misguided movie.

And seriously, enough of his glowing balls. It reminds me of that Film Snob entry on “film vs. movie”: A movie is where you see a woman’s bare breasts. A film is where you see Harvey Keitel’s penis. It doesn’t say anything about glowing genitalia; maybe in the next edition.

Penises aside, Watchmen is thematically confused, if not altogether morally bankrupt. Dr. Manhattan, and those he colludes with, actually make a case for killing millions to save billions. Only in a story this convoluted and preposterous would the characters be denied other choices. The fact that this movie even offers the choice proves that it’s edgy and daring, but to what cost? It sacrifices humanity for the characters’ egos, and that’s unforgivable in a superhero film.

This last development, set in an Arctic lair of all places, reminded me of two films: First, Sophie’s Choice, where a woman is told to pick one of her two children to die in the Holocaust. And another, Fail-Safe, where Americans willingly nuke New York City to pacify the Soviets and stop an impending World War III. Both films offer their characters horrific choices, but we can sympathize with their dilemmas because they’re not omnipotent beings who act on their quantum subconscious (i.e. Manhattan), but real people with real hopes and fears. We sympathize because we respect the path that led to their choices. The audience is not given that much freedom in Watchmen, a movie that mandates our sympathy, yet never earns it.

The others superheroes aren’t so bad, though: Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) plays a retired doofus well enough, complete with giant glasses and ill-fitting suits; Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman, whose pluckiness I admired in The Hearbreak Kid) is both leggy and curvy in just the right proportions; and Rorschach seems to have a warrior’s code and maybe even morals under that smearing mask of his. Rorschach is played by Bad News Bear Jackie Early Haley, who’s so terrific that I was left craving for his own movie away from everyone else.

I’ll just admit it: I hated this story. I hated the way it manipulated the characters into choices. And I hated the way it held itself in such high regard, as if it just assumed it were the coolest kid on the block without having to prove itself. Especially infuriating is the way it mythologized Watchmen’s flat, vacuous plot; give me Dark Knight’s three-dimensional mythology any day of the week. Director Zack Snyder (300), who honored the graphic novel by turning nearly every comic panel into a frame within his movie, is a skilled storyteller; it’s just unfortunate this story is so unfulfilling.

I also admit that I loved the rock ’n’ roll soundtrack — with Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel — and the high-octane action editing over it. Also spectacular are the visual effects: Nite Owl’s impressive bird jet, the electric field generator that creates god-like superheroes, Rorschach’s mask, and Dr. Manhattan’s array of explosion and teleportation tricks. Many of the effects are one-offs, little blink-and-you’ll-miss moments sprinkled throughout. One of them shows Manhattan’s circulatory system suspended in the air. Another has him analyzing an exploded view of a tank, as if every piece were pulled apart simultaneously. Visually, Watchmen is incredible. But just visually.

Does any of this Watchmen bashing matter, though? Probably not, simply because the hype has already been built and reversing it is something even Dr. Manhattan couldn’t accomplish (assuming he’s not on Venus when we’re looking for him). Comic books fans will love Watchmen, not because it’s worth loving, but because they’ve been programmed to love it, as if questioning its authenticity were a high crime against their beloved comics. Non-comic fans will enjoy the pop-art imagery, but they'll agree with this: Watchmen is overrated.

This review originally ran in the West Valley View March 6, 2009.