{"id":8810,"date":"2010-04-26T06:55:01","date_gmt":"2010-04-25T22:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=8810"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:11:57","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:11:57","slug":"planet-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/04\/26\/planet-51\/","title":{"rendered":"Planet 51"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-planet51a\" <\/em><\/strong>Planet 51<\/a><\/em> – on rental (2009). Planet 51<\/em> \u2013 an animated motion picture that\u2019s come out from Ilion Animation Studios, a setup based in Madrid \u2013 has one significant thing in its corner: a familiar premise but taken with a twist. There\u2019s been films of aliens landing on Earth before \u2013 but how about a film where a human astronaut lands on a planet and he<\/em> becomes the alien?<\/p>\n

For lack of a better descriptor, Planet 51<\/em> is ET\u2026 in reverse, as lead voice actor Dwayne \u2018The Rock\u2019 Johnson puts it. The setting is a small town Glipforg <\/em>which is inhabited by green rubber-eared creatures living in an era that looks suspiciously like a 1950s America. Over there, Alienphobia is a cultural way of life, with film and comic book media which paint aliens as laser-blasting grotesque creatures in flying saucers who\u2019d also capable of mind control. Amidst the town\u2019s residents is Lem (Justin Long), a socially-awkward fellow who\u2019s also skeptical about this whole notion that all aliens are hostile, the girl of his dreams, Neera (Jessica Biel), and his best friend Skiff (Seann William Scott in overdrive mode) who believes everything that\u2019s told about aliens and even adds his own unique spin on them.<\/p>\n

Their individual perceptions get put to the test when a NASA astronaut, Chuck (\u2018The Rock\u2019), lands on their planet expecting to find an uninhabited rock. Only that it isn\u2019t, and he\u2019s now the alien with the planet\u2019s military hot on his heels to dissect his brain. And who\u2019s gonna help him? Lem, Neera and Skiff of course.:)<\/p>\n

Like the recent Monsters vs Aliens<\/em>., there are loads galore of nods to sci-fiction films we all know already. You\u2019ll see lines directly from Star Trek<\/em> (something about Borg resistance), Star Wars<\/em> (\u201cYou are my only hope!\u201d), The Right Stuff<\/em> (the 1980s film about the race for Space), and The Terminator. <\/em>Not surprisingly though, few of those references as humor work. In fact, the funniest bits are typically the ones that are original. One particular standout is a hilarious scene where our group of intrepid heroes get surrounded by army goons led by a General Grawl (voiced by Gary Oldman playing it for outright laughs), and Grawl explains who gets to shoot who if their minds get overtaken by \u2018these aliens\u2019.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the film got badly panned by online critics for clunky visuals, clich\u00e9 characters, and too much slapstick humor. Personally, I don\u2019t think it was nearly quite so bad. Granted, the visuals, character design and animation work don\u2019t quite measure up to what you\u2019d normally see from something that comes out from PIxar, but for a studio producing its first full-length animation film, it still looks alright. The design of aliens won\u2019t appeal to some though: there\u2019re anatomical\u2026 er, anomalies to start with, and some of the smaller creature designs look as though they were copied directly from other bit-hit sci-fiction films for laughs without considering if they really fit logically into the film to begin with.<\/p>\n

The film is squarely targeted at the younger segment demographic, with its bright color palette, spirited and cheerful music soundtrack, and family-safe themes. I enjoyed this one.:)<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planet 51 – on rental (2009). Planet 51 \u2013 an animated motion picture that\u2019s come out from Ilion Animation Studios, a setup based in Madrid \u2013 has one significant thing in its corner: a familiar premise but taken with a<\/p>\n

Read More Planet 51<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}