Running time: 90 mins. Featuring the voices of: Dwayne Johnson, Justin Long, Jessica Biel, Gary Oldman, John Cleese. Directors: Jorge Blanco, Marcos Martinez, Javier Abad.

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The future and the past collide with amusing results in the computer-animated comedy from debutant Spanish directors Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez.

Planet 51 unfolds on the titular world, far from our own, where little green men, women and children live in domestic bliss, which bears a spooky resemblance to 1950s white-picket-fence America.

The Chordettes’s perky Lollipop plays on the jukebox of the local diner and kids crowd the cinema to watch the latest sci-fi epic about those nasty human invaders trying to destroy the resident alien communities.

When a lone astronaut does touch down on the planet, he faces the same level of hostility levelled at Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Screenwriter Joe Stillman has fun recreating the paranoia and fear of bygone America in an extra-terrestrial society, creating archetypes like a mad scientist and a warmonger general to stoke the tension.

In a nice twist, the human is a narcissistic, dim-witted buffoon who didn’t even have to delicately navigate his craft down to the planet’s surface. He just hit the auto-pilot button.

Gung-ho American astronaut Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker (voiced by Johnson) touches down on Planet 51 believing he will be the first being to ever set foot on this alien world.

Instead, the human interloper discovers teenage budding astronomer Lem (Long), his friend Skiff (Scott), sassy next-door neighbour Neera (Biel) and a species that has been nurtured on a fear of men from the skies.

Once his presence on the planet is known, General Grawl (Oldman) sets out to capture Chuck and deliver him to deranged Professor Kipple (Cleese).

“You must capture the alien and bring it to me so I can unlock the secrets of its marvellous brain,” chortles the loopy scientist.

Lem and his pals have a little more common sense, and reason that Chuck must be a good guy: “If it was smart enough to come all this way, wouldn’t it be smart enough to come in peace?”

General Grawl won’t hear such nonsense, and incarcerates the astronaut in a subterranean base.

Lem, Skiff and Neera launch a daring rescue mission with the help of Chuck’s trusty robot companion Rover to help the human visitor avoid a grim fate as a permanent exhibit at the Alien Invaders Space Museum.