Susan (Reese Witherspoon) is about to get married to the man of her dreams, but on her wedding day she gets hit by a meteorite, which turns her into a giant. She is immediately taken into custody and deported to an extremely secret government prison for monsters. America has already captured the mad scientist Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie) who has transformed himself into a cockroach to be as indestructible as the monsters: fish-man The Missing Link (Will Arnett), slimy B.O.B. (Seth Rogen) and the giant Insectosaurus.

Poor Susan is very upset about the prospect of being stuck in prison for the rest of her life and not being able to get married and live her dream life. Luckily aliens send a huge robot to San Francisco which the monsters are now being expected to destroy. Here, Susan discovers her new strength… once the robot is destroyed and the alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) has to come to destroy the Earth himself, she is quite comfortable in fighting him.

This film is really good fun! And let me just say, it is not for young kids. If I had any, I am not sure I would want them to see it. It has some quite grownup topics and jokes. But if you’re over 13, go and watch it! What really amazed me is how far the animation has come. The textures of things (like skin, fur etc) look so real! And the movements are very human and realistic. Monster vs Aliens has some great jokes, very sweet characters and a fun story. It is not going to be one of my favourite Dreamworks films, but I am happy I saw it and I have nothing bad to say about it. I might have liked it even better if I hadn’t seen the trailer. Most of the really good jokes are already shown in it. I do like how it is mocking the American society.

What I find a bit irritating, and I am not sure whether I like or dislike it, is that major animation films seem to use stars for the voices. I didn’t look at the opening titles and was wondering for a really long time who the voices were. This kind of distracted me from the story-line. I know I could just check who is in the movie before watching it, but I usually forget (only when it comes to animations…). I am just not sure if the makers choose these actors because they are best for the role or just because it will be great publicity for the movie (I suspect the latter, which does not mean that I don’t like the actors or think they are doing it badly, just that there might be someone less famous who could do it better).