Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Dwayne Johnson | ... | Captain Charles T. Baker (voice) | |
Jessica Biel | ... | Neera (voice) | |
Justin Long | ... | Lem (voice) | |
Gary Oldman | ... | General Grawl (voice) | |
Seann William Scott | ... | Skiff (voice) | |
John Cleese | ... | Professor Kipple (voice) | |
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Freddie Benedict | ... | Eckle (voice) |
Alan Marriott | ... | Glar (voice) | |
Mathew Horne | ... | Soldier Vesklin (voice) | |
James Corden | ... | Soldier Vernkot (voice) | |
Lewis Macleod | ... | Additional Voices (voice) | |
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Emma Tate | ... | Additional Voices (voice) |
Rupert Degas | ... | Additional Voices (voice) | |
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Pete Atkin | ... | Additional Voices (voice) |
Rebecca Front | ... | Additional Voices (voice) |
Lem is just an average teenager working on getting the girl and furthering his career at the local planetarium - except that he's an alien. At least to U.S. astronaut Captain Charles T. Baker who lands on Lem's planet hoping for a quick flag plant and a hasty return to earth and his millions of screaming fans. But on this alien planet the media has tagged spacemen as brain-eating, zombie-creating monsters, causing Baker to run for his life and into Lem's house. Now it's up to the green native to get the clumsy astronaut back to his spaceship before military dictator General Grawl and mad scientist Professor Kipple manage to exterminate the Earthly visitor. Written by The Massie Twins
I took my 8 year old daughter and her friend to see this opening night. There was a decent size crowd who seemed to enjoy it. For ESPN fans one of their long time personalities, who has his own video short series on the website, was there. But I digress.
It took a while to realize that it definitely was Dwayne Johnson as the astronaut's voice. He's created a great niche for himself in family films and I think he does good job. Justin Long was a good choice for the lead "alien" Lem and John Cleese is always a good choice as he did a small role as the professor. The role of Skiff brought good humor to many scenes. Sean William Scott was very animated in his voice acting for this character. Other than Rover and the hippie-like guy, the rest of the characters are just back drops without adding much.
We laughed quite a bit throughout the movie, which is mostly the point. There was plenty of cute humor with the dog-like robot Rover, who was a little reminiscent of WALL-E, a little. The down-side was that it never drew you in to fully connect, sympathize, like or dislike any of the characters. I didn't see myself rooting for anyone over anyone else. If the message is supposed to be about not judging anyone based on appearance, that message was shallow. If the message was to keep an open-mind toward what is possible and to learn new things, that message was under-developed.
Bottom line, the kids enjoyed it and we had a good entertaining night out. So in that respect it served its' purpose. The animation was suitable and I liked the 50's like theme of the planet. One or two adult humor jokes in there that could have been omitted and not change the movie.
For a family movie 7/10.