Astro-nut: Dwayne Johnson voices the spaceman in Planet 51

Directed by Jorge Blanco. Voices of Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel, Gary Oldman, Justin Long, Seann William Scott, John Cleese G cert, gen release, 91 min

FOR AN animated movie that's aimed at very young kids, Planet 51 makes a silly amount of detours in search of moments in which adults can go, "Oh look, a reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind/ET/ Apollo 13/War of the Worlds/all of these movies simultaneously".

The first few minutes alone are so crammed with such references that it’s hard to know who the screenwriter, Joe Stillman, created this movie for: children, their parents or himself.

The story is a reverse ET, in which a mildly idiotic astronaut (voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) arrives on a planet populated by Shrek-alikes. He is sheltered by one of them (Justin Long) while hunted by a general (Gary Oldman).

Signalling the film’s lack of imagination, the alien setting is merely 1950s America with a green- skinned tinge, leading to running gags about Cold War paranoia and budding hippies embedded in a rather lazy context.

Stillman was a co-writer on Shrekand Shrek 2, but Planet 51lacks the pace or spark of those movies, or characters as rounded and consistent. Sure, it looks excellent but. lacking personality. it seems clinical rather than caressed.

Nevertheless, the four-year-olds in the cinema seemed quite taken by it. And it’s short enough that their parents won’t feel too much of an urge to be beamed out of there.