Dreamworks animation has seldom scaled the imaginative heights of Pixar. But this lively story about a young girl who gets hit by a meteor on her wedding day that turns her into a giant is certainly wacky enough — and a good riposte to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the B-movie from the Fifties.

Reese Witherspoon voices the huge Sarah, who bursts through the roof of the church in which she is about to get hitched and is promptly locked up in an unearthly prison with four other freaks of science.

They are Hugh Laurie’s Dr Cockroach, a mad scientist who turned himself half- insect; Will Arnett’s The Missing Link, a sort of lizard; Seth Rogan’s jellified Bob, who swallows people and spits them out slimed over; and Insectosaurus, a giant larvae thing who can’t talk. When the President (Stephen Colbert) learns that an evil alien overlord (Rainn Wilson) is out to destroy Earth with his mutant army, he grants the monstrous quintet their freedom as they are the only ones capable of fighting him.

Film Trailers by Filmtrailer.com

The pace is fast and furious, the imaginative tropes — which include a fight between the friendly monsters and a large robot egg on the Golden Gate Bridge — reference at least a dozen movies like The Blob, The Fly and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Not that kids will notice, but they will be screaming for toys of the leading characters any day soon.