[5.50/10] Planet 51 (2009)

Planet 51 (2009)

"Planet 51" is often a well-made, funny little film that hits the right notes, but it's also a film that suffers from too strong a feeling of having been here before. Basically, "Planet 51" is about a human astronaut that is stranded in a alien planet, and while he is stranded he makes friends on the planet and tries to make it back to his shuttle so he can go back home. The movie starts out decently enough, establishing the characters and setting of the alien planet. It goes about showing us the alien equivalent of everything that we find normal on Earth, but it all quickly spirals downward, though. The jokes and equivalents begin to become quite annoying and eye-roll inducing. Also, the characters are very cliché, and just not funny. Drawing style used is god enough though and it is a pleasure to watch the design of the alien planet and its denizens. Dwayne Johnson is decent as the egotistical Baker, but you can barely tell it is him. Also lending their voices is the usually very funny Justin Long, who plays it straight for the most part as Lem; Jessica Biel who has next to nothing to do as Lem's love-interest other than give the female kiddies a reason to see this; and Gary Oldman who is clearly having fun as over-the-top villain Grawl. "Planet 51" made an effort to be a good animation movie but it didn't reach where it wanted to go.

• My Rating: 5.50/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 23% (4.1/10)
• IMDb: 6.1/10