"Planet 51" Is Just Earthbound

According to the credits, it took four people to come up with the "original idea" for Planet 51. One wonders how many assistants it takes to remind these four creative types how to breathe.

Okay, that's a cheap, smug, and unfunny wisecrack. But why should I trouble to come up with anything new and good when the makers of this smooth but tepid film couldn't?

Planet 51 revolves around a single joke: a human astronaut lands on a planet of little green men whose culture exactly recapitulates 1950s American culture, right down to the burger hops, poodle skirts, and paranoid "invaders from space" movies. And it isn't much of a joke, actually, because there isn't any novelty and barely any humor in such a situation. Had the role-reversed roles been unreversed—if it had been a story about a friendly alien who landed in California—it would hardly have been any different from what it is. (Though it might have been E.T.)

I suppose I should say something about the plot and characters. Dwayne Johnson voices Captain Charles Baker, the astronaut who fakes having "the right stuff" but goes into a spastic panic when he discovers his spaceship has landed in a suburban back yard. He is befriended by a local teenager, Lem (Justin Long), who hides him from the military forces that are trying to catch him. There are some chases and some comedy routines before Baker is captured by General Grawl (Gary Oldman) and turned over to Professor Kipple (John Cleese), who wants to remove and study the astronaut's brain. There is also a subplot about Lem's crush on a classmate, Neera (Jessica Biel). Does it spoil anything if I tell you that everything turns out happily, with everyone learning that you shouldn't be afraid of things that look different than you?

Those who take that moral seriously will probably snort derisively at this lesson coming from a film whose idea of an "alien planet" is so cosily familiar. (Baker himself makes a few sarcastic asides about how old-fashioned everything is.) Those who take science fiction seriously might wonder why its makers didn't take the "role reversal" conceit more seriously, and drop Baker onto a planet of traditional aliens. Wouldn't it have been funnier and more surprising if Baker had landed on a planet of brain-eating, mind-controlling face-huggers ... and still managed to scare the bejeebers out of them? (Or would that movie have been Monsters Inc.?)

But it doesn't really matter in the end. It's pretty clear that the movie's "moral" is only there because kid movies these days are expected to have a tame, politically correct, mother-approved "moral"; and it's certainly not supposed to be real "science fiction." All that matters is whether the jokes are funny.

And some of them do work. The film makers get quite a bit of mileage out of Planet 51's alien pets. (Quasi-spoiler: They are the beasties from Alien, only cute and playful.) They've also done a surprisingly good job ripping off Wall*E by giving Baker a dog-like robot probe named "Rover" that has more personality than anyone else in the film. There is also some sly humor with two soldiers who insist on pretending that they've been mind-controlled by Baker. And Cleese is always fun to listen to.

But the rest of it is just very boring and predictable. There isn't a single situation or conversation that surprises or delights. There's not a single satirical jab—from the villainous military man to the long-haired hippie to the conspiracy-addled comic-book geek—that isn't hard and moldy and flavorless with age. Except for Cleese, none of the voice actors bring any personality to their parts.

Technically, the film is quite accomplished, and looks as good as anything that Pixar or Blue Sky puts out. Certainly it looks better than the average DreamWorks movie, and the characters aren't the shrieking buffoons that the latter prefers to animate. Animation work was done by a Spanish crew, and it's a relief to take a break from the American studios' stock of expressions, even if the emotions in this film are only blandly put across.

I suppose there's no point in complaining that 1950's Americana has become less a comic cliché than a creative crutch for people who want to satirize "conformity." Maybe one of these days someone will make a comedy that actually casts the decade in a fond and funny light. (And maybe they'll be smart enough not to call it Back to the Future.)