With an all-star cast of voice talent and decent animation, Escape from Planet Earth could have been so much more. (Maybe they are not as smart as they think.) These messages might be subtle but one has to wonder why storytellers can’t come up with a more creative plot that doesn’t rely on the same hackneyed characters. And though the aliens believe they are higher up the evolution ladder, familial fights, nastiness on the job and competition between working women and stay at home moms happen on their planets too. Once on Earth, Gary discovers other aliens Shanker has imprisoned in an old warehouse in the Area 51 compound.Įxpect the typical kind of cartoon violence, punching, threats, food fights, tranquilizer darts and frequent gun usage by a bunch of faceless brutes in yellow hazmat suits. Scorch unknowingly becomes the stool pigeon that transports the final element for the gun when he flies to Earth in response to a SOS call.Īfter Scorch is captured and incarcerated by Shanker, the faint-hearted Gary has to leave the safety of his desk at mission control in order to save face with his son Kip (voice by Jonathan Morgan Heit). And to do so, he is in cahoots with someone from Gary’s planet. (Apparently Apple, Google and Facebook are all the brainchildren of extraterrestrials.) Shanker’s latest quest is to create the universe’s biggest weapon inaptly called a peace gun. Instead he captures out-of-this-world visitors and mines them for their technological ideas. General Shanker (voice by William Shatner) certainly isn’t interested in fostering intergalactic relations. (And yes, aliens suffer from brain freeze as well.) Their peace offering to Gary is a blue Slurpee. One has to wonder about that when the only good guys Gary meets on his mission to rescue his brother from the aforementioned bad military people are two 7-11 employees (voices by Steve Zahn, Chris Parnell). According to the historical literature on planet Baab, earthlings are the only race that is devolving rather than evolving. Escape from Planet Earth is bedeviled with stereotypical characters: bad military personnel, bad government agents, bad Americans, bad human beings. But don’t let the color change fool you into thinking Gary Supernova (voice by Rob Corddry) and his arrogant younger brother Scorch (voice by Brendan Fraser) offer anything different than the norm. The conventional image of the little green alien is passé.
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