The Blogs For Everyone

Earthlings have a 50/50 record of reaching Mars - for every successful probe, another has crashed, failed or been lost. Recently, our cinematic achievements in rendering other worlds has been even worse-2008 gave us WALL-E (four stars!) but also delivered the animated space adventures Delgo, Space Chimps and Fly Me to the Moon, which earned four stars only if you put all their ratings together.

Planet 51, which lands on planet Earth today, is better than most, though it still feels a bit derivative. Perhaps it's the title's colour scheme, best described as Shrek green. Maybe it's the fact that it was written by Joe Stillman, who also helped create Shreks 1 and 2. Maybe it's the voice talent of John Cleese, who, um, also worked in Shreks 2 and 3 ...

The story concerns an astronaut, Captain Charles T. Baker, who combines the swagger of Captain Kirk with the intelligence of Cap'n Crunch and the voice of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Baker lands on what he expected would be an uninhabited planet, only to discover a race of Shrek-coloured lifeforms enjoying an oddly suburban lifestyle.

Technologically, the Planet 51-ians are stuck somewhere in the late 1950s. (The soundtrack's first song is 1958's Lollipop.) There are anachronisms, however. They've perfected the hovercars that have been stuck at the drawing-board stage on Earth these last 50 years. And, strangest of all, they don't have pants.

OK, this one needs elaboration. The males don't wear pants, though they often have belts. (Why? To hold their shirts down?) The women wear skirts and dresses-though not pantsuits. It's as if somehow a vital step in the evolution of fashion had been skipped, and no one's the wiser. There might even be worlds (planets one through 50?) whose citizens have never heard of cufflinks, say, or toques.

Baker is regarded with fear, suspicion and outright hostility by most. Fortunately, one of the first green guys he comes across is Lem (Justin Long), who's too smitten with his neighbour Neera (Jessica Biel) to care about a potential alien invasion. He agrees to help the astronaut return to his ship. Tagging along is a puppy-like rover with a rock-collecting fixation.

I'm sorry, but can I just say how much the pants thing creeped me out? Even Shrek wore leggings below his tunic, for pants' sake! I found myself pondering genitalia-related issues that have no place in a family-friendly film. Pantless 51 is more like it. OK, I'm done now.

The movie, directed by a trio of first-time filmmakers, presents a mild message of tolerance and weren't-the-'50s-silly, but in large part the structure seems to function as a frame from which to hang movie references. There's a creature called Ripley (from Alien), whose pee can melt metal; a restaurant named Nikto's (after The Day the Earth Stood Still, though Klaatu's would have worked better); and humorous homages to E.T., Star Wars, etc.

The computer-generated animation - we're at a weird moment where it seems necessary to note that it's not in 3-D - looks superb, but the writing and plot are standard stuff. Kids will doubtless enjoy the endless chase scenes, but parents may want to leave their brains in neutral.

A DVD of Planet 51 was taken to the International Space Station in August, and is now circling Earth at 7.7 kilometres a second. Perhaps the 21st-century version of what book you would take to a deserted island is "What movie would you take into orbit?" But Planet 51, with its references to 2001 and, oddly, Singin' in the Rain, might only remind spacefarers of better films left behind.

Still, this Planet of the Japes has the sequel potential of Planet of the Apes. Imagine if Lem and his friends figured out how to visit our world. You can almost hear their greeting: "We come in peace. But not pants."