Planet 51

The burning question nowadays is whether movies like "Where the Wild Things Are" and last year's superb "WALL-E" are bad for kids. The "danger" is that such children's fare is often spiced up with sophisticated stuff that speaks to grown-ups. Which is to say, talented directors can't help making smart movies that resonate beyond baby-talk, giving aid and comfort to parents dragged into Saturday matinees with noisy herds of rug rats.

Critics (and moms and dads) worried that Spike Jonze's "Wild Things" loosed too much scary energy and melancholy: feelings more in tune with how an adult might reimagine youthful angst than a little boy's fantasy about running away from home to play at being lord of the wild things. Maybe a reunion with "Lord of the Flies" would disabuse these nervous nellies of the notion that kids are vessels of pure, unadulterated innocence and joy instead of unsocialized savages.

Should we limit our offspring to viewing experiences that are soothing, feel-good soma? Should they be protected from images and emotions that might tip them off to the possibility that life won't always be sunny, with no chance of rainy-day blues? 'Fraid you're on your own, mom and dad. When it comes to stamping a film A-OK or verboten for your little darlings, all a reviewer can or should do is to share his/her own sensibility and standards. As for those voices of authority who arrogantly prescribe what's good for each and every child, such generalizations are Brave New World bunk. Know your own child and act accordingly.

That said, meet "Planet 51." The first film out of Spain's Ilion Animation studio will appeal only to people who think immersing a hapless infant in multicolored Jell-O for 90 minutes is a good thing. Rest assured that nothing of significance will disturb said infant, neither feelings nor images nor ideas. No danger here; just a faint, faraway tickle of boredom. (The single audible sign of life among the kids with whom I watched the film was a half-hearted giggle at a lame fart joke.)

Basic premise sounds grabby. Here's an alien world, painted in pastel hues, living through the tail-end of the ultra-square 1950s, a mirror of our own Eisenhower decade. Think "Father Knows Best," white picket fences, Archie and Betty, and the communal conviction that an invasion by little green men is imminent. Since Planet 51's denizens are themselves pea-green, four-fingered folk with fat antennae, limp banana-locks and a startling dearth of noses and genitalia, their idea of an alien looks more like us. The joke depends on your recalling our own pervasive, post-nuclear paranoia in matters of little green aliens and hideous mutants, source of so many deliciously scary and message-y sci-fi flicks in the '50s.

True, some guitar-strumming, placard-wielding protesters turn up in this best of all possible worlds to herald the coming of the loud, wild, party-colored '60s. But these weak sisters are as lukewarm as all the other green beans on Planet 51.

Ilion Animation's known as a producer of spiffy video games (and yes, "Planet 51" the game is slated to drop at the same time the movie is released). The detail work here is amazing, delivering an authentic sense of bad weather (it rains rocks), late afternoon light, the geography of a Norman Rockwell small town and a sprawling secret army complex called Base 9. Everything's built on the round, including houses, doors, windows, bowling pins and pink, big-finned Caddie hovercraft. But the pretty vistas are so lacking in defining color and focused action, all that meticulous detail simply gives you mild eyestrain. No idiosyncratic imagination informs this cutesy-poo Lollipop Land; it's a high-concept paint-by-numbers canvas.

When square-jawed American astronaut Charles "Chuck" Baker (Dwayne Johnson) lands on Planet 51, a "green goober" named Lem (Justin Long) tries to help the "alien" get back to his ship before General Grawl (Gary Oldman) offs him or mad scientist Professor Kipple (John Cleese) scoops out his brain. There's way too much to-ing and fro-ing as Lem and his astronaut pal play hide-and-seek with the bad guys. Finally, "Planet 51" takes a timeout from its explosive climax to deliver a kindergarten homily: Don't be afraid of the unknown; it can broaden your horizons. Takes you back to those dumb educational movies that teachers used to show in schoolrooms in the '50s.

I have no idea what age level this cartoon is built for. A toddler might nod off to dreamland, courtesy of pretty colors and squeeze-toy aliens. Older kids could twig to the grab bag of references (rarely funny or particularly relevant) to other sci-fi movies: "District 9," "Star Wars," "Terminator," "Alien," "E.T.," "WALL-E." But what kid's gonna chortle with nostalgic recognition when a stone-collecting Rover robot "dances" in the street, emulating Gene Kelly's joyous abandon, during one of the rock-rainfalls? And a couple of raunchy innuendos involving gay sex, anal probes and protective corks stand out like sore thumbs.

Here's one children's movie that parents don't have to dither about. The antidote to turning little brains to mush with mindless fare like "Planet 51"? Stay home and savor "Princess Mononoke," a "green" masterpiece by Hayao Miyazaki.

Kathleen Murphy currently reviews films for Seattle's Queen Anne News and writes essays on film for Steadycam magazine. A frequent speaker on film, Murphy has contributed numerous essays to magazines (Film Comment, the Village Voice, Film West, Newsweek-Japan), books ("Best American Movie Writing of 1998," "Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West") and Web sites (Amazon.com, Cinemania.com, Reel.com). Once upon a time, in another life, she wrote speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel and Diana Ross.