Space Chimps

August 5th, 2008

By Gem

Space Chimps is the story of a young Chimpanzee called Ham the third (voiced by Andy Samberg from SNL) who has lived in the shadow of his famous grandfather his entire life.  Ham the first was the first mammal to explore space.  Overshadowed by such a famous grandfather, Ham ignores his dreams of space travel and becomes a Chimp clown who is blown out of cannon every show at a second rate circus. 

The scene shifts to NASA where a very expensive space rover has been sucked into a worm hole.  The ship crashes into a distant planet and landed in the hands of an evil alien (voiced by Jeff Daniels) who has started using a machine to make his own mini Las Vegas!

HAM III thinks humans run everything and only use chimps to save their lives.  Again with the Americans ruining everything and being lazy etc. bit just like WALL*E.  (For children’s movies this summer it has been very self hating Hollywood summer.) Anyways, Space Chimps Titan, (Patrick Warburton who does the best dumb jock voice ever ex. Kronk from Emperors New Groove) Luna (Cheryl Hines from Curb your Enthusiasm) and Comet are called into action after years of training but no missions. Since the wormhole mission is too dangerous for humans to go on Titan, Luna and Comet are the next best choice.  Senator Bad Guy who is always trying to get publicity and cut the NASA program decides this mission needs some pizzazz and grabs Ham III from his circus home.  So begins the space hi-jinks as slacker Ham clashes with all work and no play Titan and Luna as they try to retrieve the space rover.

I am a pure optimist so let’s start with the positives.  This movie was simple fun from start to finish.  The story was okay, the animation was good and characters were cute and relatable.

Now the bad, for a movie from the people that brought you “Shrek” this was a disappointment.  The writing definitely wasn’t up to par, I giggled a few times but there were way too many tired jokes and puns.  During the big adventure sequence I was slightly entertained but I couldn’t understand why thousands of the aliens did not band together to overthrow the one alien dictator?

Parents should take their kids to a matinee of Space Chimps after watching WALL*E.

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