Friday
27Mar2009
Movie Review - 'Monsters vs. Aliens'
Friday, March 27, 2009 at 12:02AM | Monsters vs. Aliens
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, and Set Rogen  |
Even with the amazing advancement in film effects (see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), some stories are still beyond the scope of live action film. With the rise of computer animation over the years – thanks primarily to Pixar’s ability to merge brilliant visual artistry and fantastic, imaginative scripts – animated movies have picked up some of that slack. As a result, this new technology has helped to create opportunities for Wall-E and even Coraline that didn’t exist just a handful of years ago.
It remains to be seen how much further animation and live action will go with the assistance of a new renaissance in 3-D, but this year, it is off to a good start, with many more examples yet to come. The previously mentioned Coraline experimented with stop-motion animation in 3-D, and there was a real breakthrough in the unlikeliest of places – My Bloody Valentine might demonstrate the best live action 3-D ever. And while 3-D has yet to become a completely mainstream idea, it’s getting there in a hurry.
From a technical standpoint,
Monsters vs. Aliens is flawless. That has never been true of a 3-D film before, but from the moment the glasses go on, the picture is pristine, the animated characters and places leap to life, and the screen is filled with all sorts of terrific eye candy. It is a master class of 3-D merging with steadily improving graphics to make this sort of presentation viable if not vital.
One of the big gripes about 3-D in general is that watching a movie through a pair of special glasses adds so much artifice to the goings on that it completely kills the illusion. It becomes impossible to separate the movie from the typically underwhelming performance of the cardboard or plastic spectacles.
But the glasses, which can be physically encumbering in addition to being distracting, don’t even register during Monsters vs. Aliens. Finally, there’s a completely unconscious 3-D experience, one that doesn’t launch the action out of the screen as a gimmick but instead creates a complete, three-dimensional motion picture.
Watch the Monsters vs. Aliens trailer
Reader Comments (8)
Do I get to recycle my cool 3-D glasses from the Super Bowl, or do they provide the viewer with a handsome new pair?
you'll get a new pair. It is new technology that does away with the red and blue lenses and uses different polarization instead
So when do I buy a pair of glasses for msyelf so I dont have to wear cardboard but something half decent? Are all the movies using the same tech or do you need different glasses for different movies?
ARGHHH! lol - yes you get a new pair at the theater - a pair that actually work well. Forget the Super Bowl glasses - they are ancient history man.
They're almost Roy Orbison specs. Very classy. Nothing like the Super Bowl glasses, which were a real disaster.
I want to buy my own custom 3-D glasses, preferably ones with secret compartments for hiding candy bars and such...
(flames on the side, optional).
NY Post critic/pinko Lou Lumenick gave this one star, so given his track record and politics, I expect to have a great time seeing MVA this weekend, 3-D or no 3-D...
all of these comments are about 3-D glasses. is the movie good?!