Saturday 19 December 2009

Planetoba 51

Another company, Spanish this time, throws its hat into the animation ring with a wee piece that has been described as a "reverse ET".

The idea is an amusing one: human spaceman comes to a planet, fails to look out his window to see that it is inhabited, and goes out to have hilarious adventures! Fortunately, the planet atmosphere is the same as earth, and the aliens speak English and have exactly the same motivations as any other coming of age teen movie. Which is what it really is. So you know the guy-alien-thingy will end up with the girl-alien-thingy.

The message is about the unknown. You can tell this, because the movie comes to a screeching halt to deliver it! The unknown in this case is outer space and aliens, and the movie has many references to 1950s sci-fi paranoia, and more recent movies (I won't mention Ripley, as everyone else has).

While the plot isn't up to much, it's still a fun movie. Fortunately the named actors don't get in the way, although Jessica Biel tries to hard to comes across as (literally in this case) the girl next door. (Although John Cleese is eminently noticeable, but then he's playing the Evil Bad Guy.)

I'd say... check it out if you happen to be there, but not something to go otu of your way to watch.

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