In a sentenceThe astronaut is the monster, the suburb is 1950s America, and the only character with a personality is a probe on wheels
Lem (Justin Long) lives on a faraway planet whose town looks like 1950s suburban America. He has just landed a job at the planetarium and is working up the nerve to ask his neighbour Neera (Jessica Biel) to the dance. Then American astronaut Chuck Baker (Dwayne Johnson) lands his capsule in a back garden, plants a flag on what he was told was an empty world, and runs for his life, because the locals have been raised on B-pictures about brain-eating human invaders. Lem hides him. General Grawl (Gary Oldman) sends the army after the monster, Professor Kipple (John Cleese) wants its brain for science, and Chuck’s probe Rover trundles about the town behaving like a lost dog.
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The joke is good: the human is the invading alien and the aliens are 1950s suburbanites. Jorge Blanco’s film builds the town with care and a robot dog with love, then spends an hour chasing its astronaut round it; children will be fine.
Planet 51 has one idea and it is a good one. Chuck Baker (Dwayne Johnson), an American astronaut, lands on what he has been told is an empty planet, plants a flag, and finds himself in the back garden of a suburb that looks like 1950s America. The locals have grown up on B-pictures about invading humans who eat brains, so the astronaut is the monster. Jorge Blanco’s film is the friendly-visitor story run backwards, and for about twenty minutes it is as pleased with the joke as we were.
The pleasure is in the town. Julian Muñoz Romero’s production design gives the aliens a main street of rounded diners and picket fences, a drive-in showing a film called Humaniacs, and a planetarium where Lem (Justin Long) has just landed a job he is proud of. The household pets are small acid-dripping creatures with a face borrowed from Alien, and the film knows we know. It is a nicely built world, more detailed than its story needs, and we found ourselves looking at the backgrounds while the foreground talked.
The best character is a probe. Rover is the robot Chuck sent ahead, a boxy thing on wheels that behaves exactly like a labrador: it fetches rocks, it wags its aerial, it cannot work out doors. Frank Welker supplies the whimpers. We laughed, properly and without shame, at a sequence in which Rover chases a terrified alien pet through a kitchen, and again when the army takes it into custody and treats it as a weapon of unknown power. Every time the film cuts back to it the energy comes up, and Alex Rodríguez’s editing is at its sharpest in these scenes, where the gags are physical and timed to the frame.
The rest is thinner. Johnson’s Chuck is a vain, cheerful, slightly dim man who speaks in the catchphrases of Earth films nobody on the planet has seen, and the joke that his references land on blank faces is funny the first time and tiring by the fifth. Lem wants to ask Neera (Jessica Biel) to the dance and is too nervous to, and that is the whole of his inner life. Skiff (Seann William Scott), who works in the comic shop and knows every invasion film by heart, is given the most lines and the fewest reasons for them. Gary Oldman’s General Grawl barks, John Cleese’s Professor Kipple wants Chuck’s brain in a jar; both actors enjoy themselves and are used about once each.
Once the astronaut is hidden and the army is looking for him, Joe Stillman’s script becomes a chase, and the chase takes most of the middle hour. Chuck is moved from the planetarium to a bedroom to the back of a van; soldiers (Mathew Horne and James Corden among them) search and miss; Glar (Alan Marriott) stands at the edge of the frame with a guitar and a protest song that seems to have arrived from a different decade. We were bored, and then we were annoyed about being bored, because the town plainly had more stories in it than the one being told. Chris Brown and James Seymour Brett’s score keeps the brass and bongos going and cannot hide that nothing is at stake except whether the chase will end.
Against the animated features of the same period it looks handsome and a step behind. The faces are expressive and the surfaces are clean, but hair and cloth sit stiff where other studios had learned to make them move. Stillman had a hand in Shrek, and the method here is the same: a familiar story turned inside out and stuffed with references for the parents. Shrek also had characters who wanted things. Here the references are the point and the people are there to carry them, and a film that asks its aliens to look past the monster films and see who is actually in front of them might have done the same for its own cast.
It is a U, and a fair one: there is a joke about the astronaut’s bottom and nothing worse. A child of six or seven will be happy for the full 91 minutes, and the adult beside them will be happy for twenty and then grateful every time the robot comes back. Most critics landed about where we have. Put it on for the children and keep something to read within reach.
Most critics give Planet 51 a mixed but good-natured notice: an amiable children’s animation that raises laughs without leaving much behind. The praise clusters on the humour. Several reviews enjoy the broad slapstick and the steady run of in-jokes for film fans, and the setting’s playful resemblance to 1950s small-town America is generally found a pleasing idea. Empire is the one outright admirer, calling it fun and charming for all its lack of big-studio polish.
The reservations cluster on originality. Most reviews note that the science-fiction references are recycled rather than reworked, and that the story and characters are too thin to carry a feature; The Guardian also complains the comedy runs out before the end. The spread is wide. Variety is the harshest, finding the film lame-brained and incurious about its own world, while most others settle for a shrug: pleasant enough for small children, not ambitious enough for anyone else.
Newman finds the film fun and funny, with considerable charm despite lacking the polish of bigger-budget animations. He praises its broad humour and especially its neat, inspired comic touches.
Read the full review →The page identifies this as a review, but the critic’s verdict is inaccessible. The available text does not reveal what the critic singled out for praise or complaint.
Read the full review →Staunton finds it a fun, sprightly animated adventure for children. He praises its frequent laughs and its playful resemblance to 1950s America.
Read the full review →Bradshaw finds the animation amiable and moderately funny, but says it loses comic momentum before the end. He particularly criticizes an anachronistic hippie protester in Joe Stillman’s script.
Read the full review →The three-star rating indicates a measured rather than enthusiastic verdict. The review text is unavailable, so its specific praise or complaint cannot be identified.
Read the full review →The capsule offers a mixed verdict on the animated sci-fi comedy. It singles out the film’s imaginative premise while finding its execution less successful.
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The Iron GiantThe 1950s, a visitor from space and a boy who hides it, done with real feeling.
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Mars Attacks!Tim Burton’s B-picture invasion played straight and nasty; for the parents, not the children.
Fantastic PlanetA French animated world where humans are the pets; strange, slow and unforgettable.
A Grand Day Out · not reviewed yetWallace and Gromit go to the moon in half an hour and waste none of it.
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