Movies We’ll Be Seeing: PLANET 51

Just a few thought about the trailers so far for Planet 51 (trailer 1, trailer 2), an animated family flick about an astronaut who lands on a planet that happens to be inhabited by aliens with a surprisingly typical American way of life. It's sort of like an inverted alien invasion movie with an E.T. bent, I guess.

The Rock is in full effect voicing the astronaut, a blond, haired white dude. This kind of throws me a bit, to be honest, but I guess it's a sort of progress, seeing as how many times in the past white dudes have been cast to voice or even play characters other cultural descent.
The animation is apparently better than I'd realized at first glance, since a lot of the visual jokes in the trailer are things that should be tired by now, but are actually making me smile-to-chuckle at them. I think it's the little details, like the blinds in the bedroom window toward the end of both trailer being circular rather than vertical. It's always nice to see non-Disney/Pixar studios pay attention to this sort of thing when world building.
The Alien dog is absolutely awesome. The bit with the acid pee on the street lamp in the beginning of the trailer is a nice twist on that tired old saw (see my previous point), but the kicker is the gag when he attacks The Rock. NICE!
Similarly, my inner geek gets a big kick out of the lunar rover acting like a dog. Your mileage may, of course, vary. I fully and freely admit that, sometimes, I'm easily amused, and seeing little dog-like robots acting all alive and stuff (and scoring his own urination joke) just pushes one of those buttons in my brain.

It's set to hit theaters at that sweet spot for family movies, coming out around Thanksgiving, so it's obvious that Sony is expecting big things from it. After the massive success of so many other animated movies this year, I think it's a fair bet to guess that Planet 51 will be doing just fine this winter, and that my family'll be amongst those dutifully filing into the theater sometime in early December.