Escape from Planet Earth

'ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH': Two and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

An animated sci-fi adventure film about a popular astronaut hero from another planet who becomes trapped on Earth and has to be rescued by his computer nerd brother. The all-star voice cast includes Brendan Fraser, Rob Corddry, Ricky Gervais, William Shatner, Jessica Alba, Sofia Vergara, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jane Lynch, Craig Robinson, George Lopez, Steve Zahn and Chris Parnell. It's directed by first time feature film director, and former storyboard artist, Carl Brunker and written by Brunker, Bob Barlen, Tony Leech and Cory Edwards. The animation is colorful and fun to look at and the cast is impressive as well but the story and scene content is pretty simplistic. I liked the monster movie sci-fi send-up though.

Scorch Supernova (Fraser) is a popular astronaut superhero, of sorts, on his home planet Baab. He's looked up to by many there but his brother, Gary (Corddry), is the brains behind their team and he always guides the dimwitted Scorch through his missions, from the BASA base where they work. Gary never gets any of the credit though and even his own son Kip (Jonathan Morgan Heit) idolizes Scorch. When their boss, Lena (Alba), orders Scorch to travel to the 'Dark Planet' (Earth), in response to an SOS there, Gary knows it's a bad idea (due to the fact that no other alien life form has ever returned from there). He advises Scorch not to go on the mission but Scorch ignores him and the two get in a huge fight when Gary quits. Scorch goes on the mission without his brother's help, for the first time, and is captured and imprisoned at Area 51. It's of course up to Gary to save him.

The animation is beautiful to look at and has a lot of character to it, unfortunately the story doesn't. It's about as simplistic and by the numbers as you can get. I like a lot of the actors in this cast (especially Corddry, Gervais and Vergara) but their talents are wasted here. Fraser is perfectly cast as the dimwitted hero, once again, but he's the only star that really adds anything special to his role (which is funny because he's arguably the least talented). Like I said the whole Area 51 monster movie send-up is fun but that's about it. It should please kids but other than some great looking animation and a decent score (including a cool song by Owl City) the film has little else to offer adults.

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