Space Chimps

If I were 20 years younger, you'd be reading a very enthusiastic review of Space Chimps right about now. I'd probably still prefer The Dark Knight (provided if my parents had let me see it at that age), but I'd still be talking about how much I enjoyed the film. As an adult, I am obviously much less enthused by the film, but found myself not entirely bored while watching it. I smiled a couple times, I found the cast enthusiastic, and there's even a hint of imagination. I guess that's all anyone can hope for walking into a movie called Space Chimps.

The premise revolves around an unmanned NASA search robot being sucked into a worm hole, and ending up on a strange alien world that is inhabited by a variety of bizarre creatures. It has the misfortune of landing on the house of the planet's resident angry nut job with grand plans for global domination, the greedy Zartog (voiced by an unrecognizable Jeff Daniels). He immediately sets about using the robot's advanced technology to enslave everyone else on the planet, and proclaim himself their ruler, forcing them to build him a palace in the style of a Las Vegas hotel and casino (one of the Earth images he happens to discover stored in the computer's memory banks). Back on Earth, an oily Senator (Stanley Tucci) learns the news about the lost probe, and needs some volunteers to go up into space after it. The scientists at NASA need some guinea pigs to see if a human could survive a trip through the worm hole, and so it falls upon a trio of heroic chimps to be sent off into outer space. They include Ham III (Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg), who is the grandson of the original chimp who was sent up into orbit in the early days of the space program. He works for a circus, where his act is to be shot out of a cannon, and is taken into the space program against his will when he initially refuses. His crew on the mission include the intelligent Luna (Cheryl Hines), and the oafish Captain Titan (Patrick Warburton).

This being a family film, the monkeys obviously make it through the worm hole okay, but then find they have to survive on their own on this alien world. Now that it's under Zartog's rule, it's a much more hostile place. They befriend a strange little alien named Kilowat (Kristin Chenoweth), who the entire time she was leading them to Zartog, had me wondering if the animators had something else on their minds when they came up with her design. She's a small little flesh-colored creature with an enlarged head. The unfortunate thing is that she has a tiny little pink-colored tip on top of her head, which makes it look disturbingly like a woman's breast. At first I thought her head resembled a blown up condom, but the more I looked at it, I saw a breast. The little girl sitting next to me started staring at me when I began snickering to myself just looking at her. I simply had to apologize to the child, and hold it in from then on. I guess it goes to prove that even I cannot resist the allure of hidden unintentional (or perhaps not) sexual imagery in G-rated cartoons.

Fortunately, the rest of the adventures the brave little chimps go on didn't make me feel quite so uncomfortable. They explore dangerous jungles filled with alien snakes, they brave a cave inhabited by a giant monster, and then they have to find a way to get back home. It's quite clever how the filmmakers solve this problem. There's actually some cleverness to be found here. The jokes aren't all bad, and when one of the characters starts making monkey-related puns, at least the screenplay has the sense to call the character on it, and tell him to stop. The cast is also game, and don't sound like they're merely cashing a paycheck here. Samberg and Hines are likable as the two leading chimps, and Daniels completely disappears into his villain role, so much so that I didn't realize it was him until the end credits informed me. As far as animation goes, it's pretty low budget stuff, but it's bright and colorful and at least isn't offensive. No one will ever mistake this for Pixar, but I've seen much worse.

Space Chimps seems kind of small in scope to be on the big screen, but should do just fine on DVD as a time waster for the kids while you do stuff around the house. Plus, you won't have to explain why you laugh to yourself whenever Kilowat shows up. The movie may be nothing special, but I'd gladly take it over the uninspired Meet Dave and the gimmicky Journey to the Center of the Earth. If your kids are burned out on Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda, you could do a lot worse than this.

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