Meet B.O.B.: Short for Bicarbonate Ostylezene Benzoate, he's a sentient, one-eyed glob of goo with a penchant for one-liners.
Also, much like the movie he's in, he has no brain and no heart, but gets by on whacked-out zaniness and a modest slime-trail of charm. "Monsters vs. Aliens" doesn't live up to the promise of its premise, which pits Earthly creatures against extraterrestrial beasties in a battle for the well-being of our planet -- and our short attention spans.
As I've learned from listening to way too many "Futurama" DVD commentaries, the design and implementation of complex animated characters is a considerable, and costly, task. That's why Homer Simpson always wears blue pants; it's more work and expense to redesign the character and put him in, say, a muumuu, or merely tighty-whities.
With this in mind, "Monsters vs. Aliens" implies a level of spectacle but is ultimately limited by its character palette. There's B.O.B. (voice of Seth Rogen), the mad-scientist Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), the half-ape, half-fish Missing Link (Will Arnett), a towering, growling grub dubbed Insectosaurus and the 49-foot, 11-inch woman Ginormica (Reese Witherspoon), who join forces to thwart the evilness of four-eyed octopod Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson), who orbits Earth in his spaceship.
At first, Gallaxhar unleashes a massive robot, whose attempts to stomp San Francisco into rubble provide the thrilling amplitude we've come to expect from animated big-studio extravaganzas. But this ambitious set piece aside, "Monsters vs. Aliens" disappoints, even in its 3D form -- especially when remembering the colorful complexity of "Finding Nemo" and its teeming schools of ocean fish, or the whirring-and-buzzing robot multitudes in "WALL-E."
Rated: PG for sci-fi action, some crude humor, mild language
Voice cast: Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Hugh Laurie
Directors: Rob Letterman, Conrad Vernon
Run time: 94 minutes
Here, we get Gallaxhar creating a vast army of clones of himself, which seems like a cost-cutting equivalent of Homer's perpetual wardrobe. It's the difference between a work of art and a moderately amusing time-waster such as "Monsters vs. Aliens," which seems to channel most of its budget into big-name voice actors instead of investing in the imagination of its animators, who certainly could have provided the large-scope visual detail it needs -- e.g., the wonderment that oodles of otherworldly critters and gargoylian whatnot could provide.
Outside of B.O.B.'s handful of worthwhile zingers (and we heard the best ones in the trailer), the screenplay underachieves. Oh, there are homages to "The Blob" and "Attack of the 50-Foot Woman," and a "Close Encounters" reference dovetails into a "Beverly Hills Cop" nod, but the six credited writers mistake nonsense for humor, and our reaction is tepid bemusement. Even funniest-man-in-showbiz Stephen Colbert, playing the President in a bit of inspired casting, struggles to find inspiration in this middling material.
Ginormica, who once was the average-size Susan Murphy before she was clobbered by a radioactive meteor, provides the movie's relatable human element. Her heroism is admirable, but her dream-wedding-interrupted-by-unexpected-growth story is flat and by the numbers.
Far more entertaining is B.O.B., who hits on a Jell-O mold and swallows and digests cars with ease. Unfortunately, he's a metaphor for the movie as a whole, which doesn't mold itself into something exciting and new, but is content to exist as a poorly defined blob of ooze.
E-mail John Serba: email@example.com