Monsters vs Aliens

Most of the time, we take him to the drive-in (luckily, we have one of the very few left just a hop, skip and a jump away). We’ve taken the truck with a twin mattress and some El Pollo chicken and unlimited snacks that don’t cost an arm and a leg. He generally does well if it’s a movie he’s interested in… we thought he would do okay to see Monsters vs Aliens in theatre, so we took him to see it in 3D over the weekend.

He started out good, fascinated with things he thought he could reach -- did ok for the most of the movie. For the first 10 minutes (about how long it took for them to set up the plot), Ethan kept asking “Where are the monsters?”. While Mike and I were busy trying to match the voiceovers to the characters. Now I know silence is golden in the theatre and all that jazz, but after a couple of other parents ssssh-shing their kids and babies crying in the background, we just kind of gave up. It was matinee after all, and a family movie. Between balancing on the folding seat (we didn’t get a booster chair), looking for the monsters, clapping for the monsters, and fighting for the popcorn tub, Ethan thought it was entertaining. He did start to get antsy towards the end and didn’t want anything to do with the 3D goggles – which only made the movie looked like you were watching it drunk.

The movie was cute overall. It centered itself on Susan, the giant girl, while the rest of the monsters – a blue gelatinous blob who falls in love with green jello, a brilliant scientist who turned himself to a cockroach, and a creature made of equal parts fish, ape, and frat boy referred to as The Missing Link -- just kind of followed in her shadow. The boyfriend was an ambitious jerk. The president in the movie was an idiot, I didn’t find him funny at all. There was a part in the movie where the “alien” started to attack, and the president said “we have to raise the terror level to code brown, because I have to check my pants”. Seriously…

In my opinion, it didn’t live up to the other Pixar movies. While the concept of the ass-kicking girl is all good and dandy, I didn’t really find myself all too interested in her character (it took her half the movie to realize she didn’t deserve her jerk-of-a-boyfriend). Oh well.

Ethan enjoyed it though! :)