Strip away the gazillion pop culture references that cloud the atmosphere of Planet 51 and you’re left with a scarcely inhabitable kid’s sci-fi that hasn’t an original idea beyond its setup. Actually, even that’s a blatant role-reversal of the likes of E.T, My Favourite Martian and The Iron Giant as it sees a human astronaut cause chaos when he lands on a distant planet populated by a green, paranoid species of aliens.

For reasons left unexplained, the alien planet mirrors a 1950s Pleasantville society as a grating rendition of Ronald & Ruby’s ‘Lollipop’ fills the airwaves and popular alien invasion B-movies feed off of the increasing paranoia of the people. This proves problematic for egotistical US astronaut Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker (Dwayne Johnson), who after landing on the planet he thought was uninhabited, is welcomed by deathly screams since everyone is convinced he is an evil brain eating alien. The only one who knows better is teenage planetarium worker Lem (Justin Long), who with the help of his geeky friend Skiff (Seann William Scott) and girl-next-door crush Neera (Jessica Biel), decides to help Chuck get back to his Lunar module before his orbiting vessel returns to Earth. The problem is that it has since been quarantined by order of General Grawl (Gary Oldman) and his consulting professor Kipple (John Cleese), both hell-bent on capturing the invading ‘Humaniac’ before he supposedly turns everyone on the planet into his Zombie slaves.

Although the screenplay is accredited to one Joe Stillman of former Shrek glory, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Planet 51 was actually written by a bunch of monkeys – perhaps those from last year’s equally-forgettable Space Chimps – who were trapped in a room with some typewriters. Surprisingly, the works of Shakespeare are the only texts they haven’t blatantly ripped off; aside from the myriad of visual gags referencing films ranging from Singin’ In the Rain to Star Wars, the dogs look like the creatures from Alien and Rover the rock-obsessed robot has clearly been inspired by WALL-E (regardless, he is still the best thing about the film). While I’m all for a bit of intertextuality, the red flag tends to go up when approximately 80% of the jokes are based around imitating other movies.  Worse yet, most of these gags aren’t all that funny in their execution, going completely over the heads of the intended audience, while warranting little more than a smirk from adults.

The story is serviceable enough to silence the kids for 90 minutes, but some clumsy plotting and irrational concepts will likely frustrate older, wiser audience members. Why, for instance, is a planet millions of miles from Earth a replica of 1950s American society? How come they’ve invented hover cars but not colour TV? How do they keep their grass so green when it only rains rocks?
I know this is over thinking for a kid’s film, and admittedly, most of these irrationalities are overlooked in the long run. Nevertheless, it is but a few examples of how Planet 51 has been stitched together from an assortment of ill-conceived ideas that struggle to outline a clear internal logic that is vital to any film.

What keeps Planet 51 watchable is the attractive visuals and solid voice talent. Newcomers in the cut-throat 3D animation industry, Spanish company Ilion Animation Studios show that with better script and more astute direction – it must be said that this is the debut film for each of the three directors — they have the potential to play amongst the big boys (namely DreamWorks and Disney Pixar). Their character models are uninspired, but the environmental detail in Planet 51 is impressive and the action is energetic and fluid. They’ve also enlisted an excellent voice cast, helmed by Justin Long and Dwayne ‘stop-calling-me-The-Rock’ Johnson, each providing a solid vocal dynamic to otherwise one-dimensional characters. Yet it’s the supporting cast that steals the show, particularly Gary Oldman as the stern General and John Cleese as the eccentric Professor. They may be the antagonists, but they’re easily the most likable of the bunch.

Ultimately, Planet 51 is a (barely) tolerable kid’s film that will be quickly forgotten shortly after you leave the cinema. Considering the vastly superior Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is still in cinemas and Coraline is now on DVD, I can’t see why you’d bother.

 

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