If you’re old enough to read this review, you aren’t the target audience for “Space Chimps,” a movie about chimpanzees sent in search of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
“Chimps,” from the animation studio that gave us “Valiant,” is one of those cartoons parents won’t mind sitting through while little Miss or Mister 8-and-under chuckles at the cute talking primates.
And chuckle they will. With adorable critters and icky monsters and oodles of potential toy accessories (to say nothing of a video game tie-in), this movie looks for that sweet spot in every 7-year-old’s heart for chimpanzees and movies about them. And the script manages the occasional wisecrack or movie lovers’ inside joke to keep the grown-ups awake.
A space-agency probe has slipped through a wormhole and found evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. Let’s send astronauts! Wait, through a wormhole? They might not survive. Let’s try it on chimps first!
To drum up publicity, the grandson of the original space chimp, Ham, is added to the crew. He’s been living out his days in a circus act, letting himself be fired out of a cannon.
Ham III (Andy Samberg) is hot for Luna (Cheryl Hines). He barely tolerates the buff, by-the-book Titan (Patrick Warburton, naturally).
But he does what he’s told.
Meanwhile, on the distant planet, the probe has fallen into the handlike appendages of Zartog (voiced by Jeff Daniels, believe it or not), an outcast who becomes a dictator. Will the chimps survive the trip and undo what evil the humans have done to these unsuspecting Teletubbies?
“Chimps” borrows from many an outer-space film, from “Star Wars” and “2001” to “The Right Stuff.” The script has clever bits about surviving a trip through “The Valley of Very Bad Things,” which include “The Dark Cloud of Id.” That’s where you face fears of inadequacy that are all inside your head. The apes fire off insults about evolution (“You’re missing a link!”).
“We’ll just have to chimp-rovise!” “Let’s chimp this ride!”
Kristin Chenoweth lends her chirpy Broadway-belter’s voice to a cuddly little alien who just begs to be added to your child’s nightstand.
The animation’s decent. And Blue Man Group bopped up some of the music. “Space Chimps” is more comically verbal than “WALL•E,” less violent than “Kung Fu Panda,” even if these chimps still have light years to go to reach the animation stratosphere of a Pixar or Dreamworks.
“Space Chimps”
G. 1 hour, 21 minutes. Directed by Kirk De Micco. Written by De Micco and Robert Moreland. Starring the voices of Andy Samberg, Cheryl Hines, Patrick Warburton, Omid Abtahi, Jeff Daniels, Stanley Tucci, Kristin Chenoweth. Opens today at area theaters.
