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Monsters vs. Aliens Movie review by Sean Means///Salt Lake Tribune// You’ll probably take your kids to see //Monsters vs. Aliens//, but you might have more fun seeing the movie without them. As //The Simpsons//   nerdy Dr. Frink once said, refusing to let kids play with a Corn Popper toy, the children won’t enjoy it on as many levels.

On one level, this animated story of earthly monsters squaring off against extraterrestrial beasties is funny and colorful. But buried within this 3-D extravaganza are a slew of references aimed at the geekiest of monster-movie fans.

The story begins when a dying planet spits out a radioactive meteorite, which lands in Modesto, Calif. Specifically, it lands on one Susan Murphy (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), who’s about to marry her TV-weatherman fiance, Derek (voiced by Paul Rudd). Just before reciting her vows, the meteorites green glow causes Susan to grow 50 feet tall and as she destroys the chapel and sends wedding guests screaming, a shadowy group of government agents in Ray-Bans captures her.

Susan finds herself imprisoned in a super-secret facility an X-file, wrapped in a cover-up, deep-fried in a paranoid conspiracy, according to its creator, Gen. W.R. Monger (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland, gamely spoofing his 24 persona) along with some other strange beings.

Just as Susan renamed Ginormica by the government starts to figure out her new life in prison, an extraterrestrial robot probe arrives in northern California, and the clueless president (voiced by Stephen Colbert) is persuaded by Monger to send his monsters into action. But facing the robot probe is nothing compared to battling Gallaxhar (voiced by //The Office//’s Rainn Wilson), the world-dominating alien who sent it. Co-directors Rob Letterman (who worked on //Shark Tale//) and Conrad Vernon (one of the co-directors of //Shrek 2//) set the story at a brisk pace and push out as many gags per minute as the audience can handle. They work seamlessly handling the much-touted 3-D effects, except in those moments where playing up the 3-D technology is part of the joke (like at the beginning, when a character is playing with a paddle ball, a reference to the 3-D classic //House of Wax//).

The much-handled script tosses oblique references to //The Blob//, //The Creature From the Black Lagoon//, the //Godzilla-Rodan-Ghidra// mash-up Destroy All Monsters and many other monster-movie conventions. Clearly the makers of //Monsters vs. Aliens// grew up on Saturday-afternoon monster movies, and their affection for the genre is contagious. -- Sean P. Means
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