Planet 51

An American astronaut lands on a planet that looks like the 1950s small-town America as envisioned by Back to the Future. The plot twist here—the human is the scary alien from the perspective of these bland middle-class greenies—is more clever than the treatment it’s given. We get a stock story about making friends and not judging people you don’t know, and the characters are absolutely generic. For the under-eight set, there may be some comfort in the rote plotting, but we’re not sure; at the screening we attended, they seemed a bit restless.

• More DVD reviews
• More Film articles