Review: Elli and Her Monster Team is a scary-bad time

I think of myself as being a pretty thorough when I'm trying to keep up on upcoming animated releases. I browse through Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, various theaters' sites, animation news sites. But somehow, Viva Kids eluded my best efforts with Elli and Her Monster Team, which I didn't know was coming to theaters until I checked my local AMCs' lineups earlier this week. After catching up with the movie (one that's been on my radar since last year), I wonder if maybe the distributor was hoping they could quietly bury it -- pun intended.

I'm not going to dance around it or drag this out. Elli and Her Monster Team is a bad movie. It happens. It's clearly intended for a younger audience, but I have to imagine that even they wouldn't find much to enjoy here. It feels derivative of other, better animated movies (there's no shortage of supernatural animated tales) without delivering much that help it to stand out from the crowd. 

Which is ironic, because our heroine is determined to carve her own path. Elli is a 13 year-old ghost, which brings to to my first question: what does that mean? Did she die when she was thirteen? Has she been a ghost for thirteen years? Are ghosts even the remnants of dead people in this movie? Much to ponder. Whatever it means, she lives with her Uncle Chamberlain (not really her uncle, but whatever), who is determined to train her to be a top-tier scarer. But Elli wants to be a nice ghost, a friendly ghost, even. The irony is that she has a crazy power that allows her to basically possess the electric grid and appear on screens and whatnot, which would be an extremely useful scare tactic. But she doesn't want to use it that way.

In the world of the film, humans are living in an advanced technological society, which includes the construction of a computer called Quantrix that is housed in a Space Needle-esque tower in the midst a sprawling city. This computer exists with the sole purpose of tracking down so-called Abnormalities, which refers to anything non-human: trolls, pumpkin-heads, werewolves, skeletons, and -- naturally -- ghosts. Roving drones scour the city and surrounding areas in search of such beings, and then digitize them into data that is stored on screens within the tower.

Again, even the premise raises so many questions. If humans and monsters have lived alongside each other for so long (which it seems they have), why is it suddenly such an issue? Who built this tower? Why is everyone okay with it? 

Listen, I know this is a movie to entertain kids at the end of the day, but as I always say, kids deserve good movies, too. There could've been a little more world-building, a little more backstory, to help make this world feel like one that actually exists, rather than as just a mere backdrop for a bland adventure.

The drones capture Chamberlain, which leads Elli on a quest to save him. From the title, you can infer that she ends up teaming up with other monsters, which sounds fun, yeah? Not so much. Instead of Elli gradually assembling a team -- which, yeah, has been done a lot, but is a fun plot structure -- she meets the entire team in one fell swoop. Rolf is a vegetarian vampire with dentures and a previous acting career. Martha is a yeti-type creature who's obsessed with a TV talent show. Knarf is a patchwork monster (think Frankenstein's monster) who likes to meditate and also has electricity powers. The three of them all live in a haunted attraction at an amusement park where they pretend to be monster puppets. It's such an underwhelming move to have Ellie just immediately find a team to work with (after some initial distrust and hijinks, of course), and is a prime example of the film's overall pacing problems.

Because, man, this thing drags. There are long slow stretches that are horribly unexciting, and occasional more interesting bits that never last long enough. It's a weirdly talk-y movie, which is not great because the dialogue is stilted at best. Worst of all is how nonsensically the characters behave. When the drones arrive at Elli and Chamberlain's house, they don't simply run away. When Elli and her team arrive in the city, they go to a (human) restaurant for tea, despite there being literal roving drones looking for monsters at the behest of the humans. There are numerous moments like this that are so frustrating and bizarre that I found it impossible to care about or root for the characters. I just wanted it to be over.

The animation is fine -- nothing special, ugly humans. Some of the character designs are a bit odd, though. Elli has a ponytail that looks like it's a towel, I think to match the flowy robe she's wearing? Her bodily structure is hard to make sense of. And Martha....yes, she's a yeti, but I really did not enjoy looking at her.

The highlight of the movie is the score (which is on Apple Music -- yes, I checked as soon as the movie was done), which has some really great, upbeat tracks alongside some more sweeping pieces. There's also a random musical number in the middle of the movie that's pretty fun, and helped to break up the monotony.

After a string of strong releases -- including their best ever, The Green Dinosaur -- Elli and Her Monster Team is a disappointing miss from Viva Kids. But (maybe lucky for them), it's one that very few people will bear witness to.