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Film Review: Escape from Planet Earth

Television is supposed to be the medium on the rise but the number of small screen stars lending their voice to this big screen flop suggests it can’t be paying that well. Sarah Jessica Parker, Sofia Vergara and Glee’s Jane Lynch join Brendan Fraser and Jessica Alba in this animated alien adventure which had the potential to be so much better.

A family of alien astronauts find themselves on a strange and unwelcoming planet, full of its own indecipherable quirks and oddities. That planet is of course, Earth.

When dim superhero alien Scorch’s mission to the “dark planet” goes drastically wrong, it is up to his long-suffering rocket scientist brother to save him from the clutches of an evil Earthling.

Taking a look at Earth from an outsider’s point of view is ripe for comedy and it does provide a few chuckles as the film takes a dig at our evil overlords (Stalin and Simon Cowell, apparently). But these references are few and far between, and despite added writing from Stephen Fry and the presence of Ricky Gervais, Escape from Planet Earth is disappointingly low on the laughs.