Escape from Planet Earth
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 Earth's awful secrets are about to break out...
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Escape from Planet Earth is a 2013 Canadian-American 3D computer-animated science-fiction adventure comedy film produced by Rainmaker Entertainment and distributed by The Weinstein Company in the United States and Alliance Films in Canada, directed by Cal Brunker, with a screenplay which he co-wrote with Bob Barlen. The film was released on February 15, 2013, and earned $74.6 million against a $40 million budget.
Plot
On the planet Baab, dashing astronaut Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser) is a national hero and master of daring rescues. However, Scorch does not work alone; his nerdy brother, Gary (Rob Corddry), head of mission control at BASA, often lends quiet, behind-the-scenes support. When a distress signal arrives from a dangerous planet, Scorch ignores Gary's warnings and sets out on a rescue mission. Scorch soon finds himself caught in a trap set by an evil enemy, and it's up to Gary to save him.
Why It Can't Escape from Pure Mediocrity
- To start, this movie is a huge carbon copy of the 2009 animated film Planet 51, only with the character species being reversed.
- Some of the characters can be bland or unlikeable:
- Scorch is an annoying and unlikable jerk who's overly reckless and does not even care about his own brother to the point where he's a Gary Stu towards his planet, Baab.
- General Shanker is completely obviously weak and forced as the main villain and it makes Lena look like the actual villain. He is also basically a humanized version of Grawl from Planet 51.
- The imprisoned aliens are rather pointless as they barely do anything in the whole entire movie. The fact that they had some major potential for the story makes it all the worst given how said potential is completely wasted.
- Several plot holes and inconsistencies:
- Particularly, when Gary first met the two humans at 7-Eleven while trying to rescue his brother, they don't seem to understand him, but when they try to find Scorch's ship and meet them at the caravan park, they are suddenly able to talk to them.
- When the main aliens return to their home planet, Lena is absent for some reason, meaning that she might be arrested off-screen.
- There's also a contradicting plot hole about the General's motivation for why he wants to erase the alien race, as the three grey aliens working for him killed his father, yet he still has them as his henchman despite clearly being the reason why he lost his father and he actually would've killed them in general because of it though this is explained after Gary and Scorch are saved from falling to their deaths when they started to finally talk about their experience with Shanker and how they weren't big fans of him, but it still doesn't make up for this weird plot hole.
- Weak humor, with plenty of it being obnoxious fart jokes and the overuse of unnecessary cartoon sound effects that feel out of place.
- It also featured unnecessary pop-culture references, particularly how Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T The Extra-Terrestrial are referenced.
- Very troubled production history: It was announced in 2007 and was released 6 years later in 2013, mainly due to the film's script going through 17 re-writes in production, the $50 million lawsuit between Tony Leech and distributor, The Weinstein Company in 2011, and firing many of the original crew members of the film, and it clearly shows. Go watch this video for more information.
- Blatant product placement: There are two scenes at 7-Eleven and the scenes where Doc mentioned that Shanker has made deals with companies such as Apple Inc., Google, Facebook, and Pixar.
- In fact, the concept of aliens inventing various technology for Shanker to rip off and sell to humans is considered an insult to mankind.
- Several sequences seem to serve no reason to be in the film at all, and thus come across as padding and filler. Examples include:
- The romance relationship storyline between Shanker and Lena. In fact, it could be considered by a lot of people to be bestiality, due to both of them being a separate species as Lena is clearly an Alien while Shanker on the other hand is a human, and since some would consider creatures since they do have a lot in common with animals on planet earth, it makes this sub-plot very awkward and comfortable to tolerate overall.
- A couch gag scene where the prison aliens cause a food fight around the cafeteria.
- The ending marriage between Scorch and Gabby.
- A pointless cameo of Simon Cowell, which didn't age well.
- The action scenes are so lame to the point where even the action scenes in Planet 51 are better.
- Mediocre character designs, with several of them being unoriginal:
- The alien designs are basically both the aliens from Planet 51 and the titular protagonist from Megamind if they were mashed together.
- The guys in the hazmat suits very much resemble the CDA agents from Monsters, Inc.
- Most of the designs for the humans, aside from Shanker, look rather uncanny.
- Laughable dialogue mainly due to the script being rewritten 17 times, particularly with the overused phrase "Scorch me, baby!".
- False advertising: The city which appears in the theatrical poster and the cover of the DVD release that the characters are in never appears in the movie.
- In addition to false advertising, the movie title as a whole is misleading too, as despite being called Escape from Planet Earth, most of the film takes place in Area 51 and not anywhere around the planet Earth, which means that the film should've just been called Escape from Area 51 instead, not with "Planet Earth".
- Much like Free Birds, this movie is somewhat a terrible way for Rainmaker Entertainment to start making their theatrical animated films, considering this movie's flaws and troubled production history (as mentioned earlier), but unlike Reel FX in which its next film is an improvement over their first film, it's next theatrical animated film, Ratchet & Clank, didn't improve for Rainmaker Entrainment to make theatrical animated films in general, ended up being its last theatrical animated film to date.
- The relationship between both Gary and Scorch is extremely generic and poorly developed, as they always tend to argue with each other in a very cliché way similar to other films, and their chemistry with each other isn't explored enough due to their constant arguing and how unlikable Scorch is, as one of the scenes tries to be very emotional with Gary being in the freezing room as he looks up to a frozen Scorch and says sorry for failing him when in reality he didn't do anything wrong as Scorch was the one who got them into trouble in the first place by going to Earth and getting kidnapped by Area 51, which makes the scene come off as awkward and not very interesting in the slightest.
- It doesn't help that the relationship between them is meant to be one of the film's highlights and signature plot points, but due to how rushed it is, it makes the writing even worse and the film more unbearable to watch.
- The movie doesn't teach kids any important messages or morals at all, as the only one it teaches is the moral about Scorch and Gary's relationship where "no matter if you don't get on with each other, you still brothers and you still love each other" which that message has been done in many other films before this one and doesn't help that the message is completely contradicted by the poor chemistry between both Scorch and Gary as previously mentioned stated before.
- Although the voice acting isn't bad in general (See RQ#2), Ricky Gervais' voice performance as Mr. James Bing (the computer who monitors Gary at BASA) is incredibly mediocre, bland and laughable as he sounds very bored out of his mind and doesn't seem to have a lot of energy doing his performance as a talking computer, which the auto tone not really helping out his performance in any favors either, with the robotic voice sounding very minimalistic and washed out at best, and to go along with him using exposition for his performance makes James come off as one of the more forgettable characters in the entire movie.
- Some questionable song choices that don't fit the tone in some scenes for the movie, such as "Bom Bom" by Sam and the Womp, and "Watch Your Back" by Zeazy Z which both of them feel out of place in the scenes that they play in, especially in the scene where Gary is in 7-Eleven trying to hide from the humans as one of the more risqué quotes from the song itself can literally heard in the scene playing in the background, which, of course, is the swear word "penis", which is extremely too inappropriate and suggestive for a PG-rated (U-rated) kids' movie.
- The movie can be rather cruel-hearted at times when it comes to the relationship with the characters, as they tend to act like jerks to each other and come off as a bit unlikable at times, with the biggest examples being the scene where Gary tells Kip to go to his room for interrupting him when all the little guy was doing is coming up with a plan to save Scorch since he's the nephew of the famous Supermodel from Baab and he loves him a lot and it doesn't help that all Gary was doing by that time was messing on the touchscreen and that's it, and the reason for Gary grounding Kip was rather unjustifiable and mean-spirited which is rather out-of-character for him to do that.
- This movie has easily some of the worst pacing in any animated movie to date, as some moments tend to drag on for too long or are way too fast paced and end very quickly giving the movie very little time to breath when it comes to its synopsis, and despite the movie running at 89 Minutes long, it feels a lot shorter than that due to the awful pacing and overall lack of focus on the core structure of the plot in general.
- It fails to have any kind of charm or heart to it at all, since the writing is so bad that it makes the movie fall flat when it comes to the potential it could've had if it didn't go through a horrendous production and it was given to people who would care for the project and give some love, which it didn't.
- Wasted direction from Cal Brunker, who would later direct PAW Patrol: The Movie, which was one of the best movie adaptions of a kids cartoon show in a decade and the best film he directed to date and was a major improvement over this movie as a whole.
- The movie overuses several story clichés and tropes, such as the scene where Gary talks to "Kip" about the quarrel that they had over Scorch's "death" and sincerely apologizes about it, only for it to be the family dog under the blanket and obviously reveals that Kip has escaped from the house, which is a trope overused in several bad animated movies that came out before and after this movie was made, making a scene that could've been emotional but they ruined it just for a cheap joke.
- It also applies to the relationship with Gary and Scorch as they don't like each other at first until the very end when they run away from Area 51 and go back to Baab which makes the movie extremely predictable and the audience will obviously know what will happen in the near end of the film, made worse by the poor writing that had the script rewritten 17 times and it shows.
Redeeming Qualities
- Decent animation, all thanks to Rainmaker Entertainment.
- The voice acting isn't that bad, aside from Ricky Gervais. (See WICEFPM#15)
- Great soundtrack composed by Aaron Zigman.
- While questionable and don't fit the tone, the song choices are decent. In particular, "Shooting Star" by Owl City, who also worked for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole ("To the Sky") and Wreck-It Ralph ("When Can I See You Again?"), is actually pretty good.
- One of the aliens is a nice nod to classic space aliens.
- Some funny moments here and there, such as a Hazmat guy playing the piano.
- While most of the plot is generic, the concept of a prison break from Area 51 is an interesting one, if poorly executed.
- Gary, his wife Kira, and his son Kip are at least likable characters, and are actually given some character development which is nice, as unlike most of the other imprisoned alien characters in the film who get none at all and wasted potential.
- In fact, Gary seems to be the one to acknowledge how unlikable Scorch is and is aware of his bad actions, such as going to Earth (or the Dark Planet as Baab described it as) which Gary thought was a bad idea since every Alien who went there never came back and were captured by Area 51, which Gary instantly predicted was going to happen and turned out to be correct when Scorch was ambushed by General Shanker and his crew.
- Speaking of Kip, he saves his dad and uncle from the hazmat pilots who were about to kill them by hijacking their plane to get away from them easily, which did show good signs of Kip becoming a more interesting character but still.
Reception
The film received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. Based on 43 reviews, the film holds a rotten rating of 35% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 4.62/10, but lacks a critical consensus. On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 35 out of 100 based on reviews from 11 critics, with the tagline "generally unfavorable reviews".
Box Office
The film also failed at the box office, only making a worldwide total of $74.6 million dollars, against its $40 million dollar budget, as in its first opening weekend, it debuted at four, and went to three, but got heavily knocked down to 9 in its fourth weekend, and was overshadowed by A Good Day to Die Hard and Identity Thief (which had made more earning at the box office in terms of worldwide sales). It was also the last animated film that The Weinstein Company would ever produce, as their next animated films from their catalog, The Nut Job duology, wouldn't have any of the staff at TWC working on those films, as they would only handle the international distribution for those films, where in the US, they were distributed by either Warner Bros. Pictures or Universal Pictures.
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