Monsters vs Aliens

Widely promoted as a movie-industry breakthrough for its supposedly innovative fusion of computer-generated animation and 3D effects, this DreamWorks super-epic is nothing more than a lame, unimaginative homage to ‘50s sci-fi movies. DreamWorks enlisted top animators and recruited vocal talent from the ranks of Hollywood's A-listers, but somebody forgot to supervise the writers, who lazily fell back on all the easy clichés and failed to breathe new life into old jokes. Reese Witherspoon is the voice of Susan, a young California woman who is bonked by a small meteorite on her wedding day and subsequently grows to a height of 49 feet. Summarily whisked away to the fabled Area 51, where she's housed with a variety of freakish creatures collected by the military over the years, Susan is renamed “Ginormica” and pressed into service to help combat an alien invasion. Some of the visual effects are indeed striking, but they're wasted on conventional gags and situations, as is the all-star cast—which includes Renee Zellweger, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Kiefer Sutherland, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, and Stephen Colbert—who work hard for what few genuine laughs exist in Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon's film. Optional, at best. (E. Hulse)