Monster Trucks is a kids film which comes from director Chris Wedge who some may know as the director who brought us Robots (2005) and Ice Age (2002). The film stars Lucas Till, Jane Levy and Thomas Lennon. Monster Trucks is basically about Tripp (Lucas Till) who really wants to get a car and drive around town, but his car doesn’t really have an engine. One day he finds this really strange monster which hides in his empty car with no engine, it turns out though that he doesn’t need an engine, the monster will do all the driving for him!
There are these movies that came out back when I was a kid, which I either ended up going to the cinema to see or even renting on video or later on DVD as I grew older which were sometimes really bad. Some of them though were so bad that for some reason they’re good and I can enjoy it. A part of me also really enjoys watching really bad movies, I kind of love it. Monster Trucks is one of those movies, I can’t tell if the kid me would have liked this or not, he’s back there in the past watching Eight Legged Freaks (2002) and is feeling indifferent after seeing it.
Monster Trucks is a bit of a crazy idea, it’s a monster in a truck and once in there it can drive really fast. I’m not sure how young the demographic is for the film, but it’s something I’d say is for people 9-13 year’s old and maybe more for boys than for girls to watch. As an adult watching this movie, I don’t mind it. Actually I found it pretty funny at times and it had a good message about growing up, relationships, friendships and bit in there about not trusting all corporations and things like that. It’s alright really and as a concept it kind of works.
But there are many people out there who will really just see this film as something about a monster in a truck with some bad cgi and a bunch of pretty average actors and that’s okay. It’s the film company’s role to sell it not mine. But do I think you should go and see this one? I’d say possibly. It’s a bit different to most kids films out there at the moment, it’s not all animated and uses real life actors. But there’s also some really good kids movies out there at the moment, such as the very popular Moana from Disney. This is kind of similar to last year’s Goosebumps, it’s a good time and it’s really silly, but I think kids will still like it.
I went into the cinema not really expecting much, I’m not in this movies chosen demographic and the concept looked really silly to me. But once I got in there and I gave the film a chance, I actually didn’t mind it. It was a small bit of fun to watch and it did make me laugh quite a few times at how silly everything was. But the film isn’t just silly, if you pay attention there are some really obvious themes in there about growing up, friendships, relationships, family and corporations and it’s all good. This movie may not be the most popular thing at the cinema this week, but it’s not as bad as you might think it is going in to see it. If you’re just going in for fun, you can actually have quite a good time.
