Judging solely based on the ridiculous poster for Monster Trucks, one would be forgiven for expecting prime hate watch material. A giant truck with Hentai tentacles unfurling from the chassis leaps over some kind of gorge while the marketing copy implores you to “meet Creech”, the lovable creature whose story the film surrounds. Everything about this seems stupid, but the final product is a pleasant surprise. Unlike the vast majority of family films designed to keep adults content while making asinine jokes for children, Monster Trucks is a throwback to the mid ‘90s VHS era. It’s sweet, sincere and genuinely entertaining.
Lucas Till stars as Tripp, a brooding high school senior struggling with his broken home. His mother, Cindy (Amy Ryan), is in a serious relationship with Sheriff Rick (Barry Pepper as a kind of budget Matthew McConaughey), while his father Wade (a suitably shitty Frank Whaley) mostly works and drinks and disappoints. Tripp works at a junkyard run by Mr. Weathers (Danny Glover), where he’s building his own truck. A nearby oil company run by Reece Tenneson (Rob Lowe) drills at a new site and unearths the strange, subterranean creature from the poster, who makes his way to Tripp’s junkyard. Naturally, Tripp and Creech become best friends, with Creech living in and operating Tripp’s truck, while the mystery of just what the hell Creech actually is begins to unfold.
Now, to truly enjoy Monster Trucks, you really just need to accept that you’re watching a movie about a teenager becoming friends with a nonverbal monster from inside the Earth because his parents broke up and he can’t form real connections with anyone else. There’s even a super-hot girl who is obviously obsessed with Tripp (Jane Levy’s Meredith) that he barely seems to acknowledge the existence of. But it’s not until Creech comes into his life that he makes headway escaping his angst-y little shell. The whole thing should be garbage, yet every element of the film’s production is kept one notch above serviceable, collectively raising the project above its cloying, condescending PG movie brethren.
First, you’ve got a cast of largely talented character actors taking the material seriously without straining themselves in pursuit of gravitas. Everyone knows they’re in a movie about a tentacle monster driving a truck and they’re not at all ashamed of this fact because they probably have kids and have all unquestionably made worse films than this. Second, the design and animation of Creech himself is pretty fucking adorable. Anything with tentacles is difficult to love, but Creech looks and feels like an endearing presence. He’s impossible not to want to hug, even if your clothes will likely be soiled in the process.
Lastly, the movie is bolstered by a series of big action set pieces that are all coherent and sharp. Director Chris Wedge comes from the world of animation, so there’s a cohesion to the choreography, staging and structure lacking in contemporary live action family films. There’s a real progression of thrills by the third act that makes the final sequences superbly enjoyable, despite largely ticking off narrative boxes most audiences will see coming from miles away. It helps that the script, written by Jurassic World’s Derek Connolly, is simple and smooth, eschewing the usual pop culture references and snark for a tone somewhere between Amblin and a made-for-TV Disney flick.
By using an oil company as the film’s primary antagonist, the door is open for some smarter, more resonant social commentary. Monster Trucks hints at some of this, but never really pulls the trigger. Sure, it’d be nice if the film was also able to say something intelligent and moving about corporate skullduggery, but with such a clean runtime, that would probably take away from screen space better populated by Creech going full Fast & Furious in multiple car chases. Not everything has to be oozing with credibility. It’s okay to make a tight little picture that extrapolates the love a teenager has for his first car to a strange yet touching tale of loving and respecting indigenous wildlife. Look, it’s not quite E.T., but it’s definitely as good as Mac & Me.
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