'Monster Trucks' - Movie Review

Our first view of our hero is a shot of Tripp Coley (Lucas Till) on a school bus, being mocked by a school mate passing the bus in his big pickup truck. Tripp is surrounded by 12 and 13 year olds. This is meant to tell us that he's a cool guy at high school who just can't afford his own wheels, but my immediate reaction was "why is an adult riding a school bus?" Till was 25 or 26 during filming, and this wasn't a good way to open when it interferes that badly with suspension of disbelief.

The premise is simple: nearby, an oil fracking operation has released three creatures from deep within the earth. Two are captured but one escapes and hides out in Tripp's truck as the oil company hunts for it to destroy it because - well, Rob Lowe (playing an oil company exec) is just evil and wants to keep sucking oil out of the earth, lifeforms and regulations be damned. Tripp finds that the friendly monster (which he calls Creech) makes a good motor for the truck he's assembling, and with the help of his exceptionally attractive biology tutor (Jane Levy) he sets out to right the wrongs.

The creatures are better than average CG - which is good, because they get a LOT of screen time.

The movie reminds me of every inoffensive second rate Disney movie ever made. And this is its biggest crime: it's just bland. It's not actively bad, but it's incredibly predictable, the humour is weak, and it's just not worth wasting an hour and a half of your life on.