Space Chimps

When the school holidays hit, there are always copious amount of animated movies on show, and usually around the September time, Dreamworks, who have been churning them out all year, suddenly find that they have some serious competition, and so they actually up the ante on this release. Going up against Pixar brings out the best in Dreamworks, and this time Space Chimps is the movie that is the fighter, but sadly, against Wall-E it kind of fails.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Space Chimps. Well, aside from the fact that the plot is a little unfocussed and as such the direction the movie is supposedly heading in seems rather confusing. The stories of the space chimps and the aliens, although you know logically must meet at some point, don't really seem destined to intertwine, and when they do it seems to be a little forced. The alien plot line suffers particularly, as we are introduced to them, find out that one is nasty and then he has a weapon of mass destruction that allows him to take over his planet. It really does occur that quickly.

Alien uprising, under funded government space programme, grandson of the greatest space chimp ever, a love story...there's a lot packed into this one little script, and occasionally it shows. The animation is great, but these days you kind of expect that. Great animation is now pretty average, and there's no real way an animated movie can be spectacular, unless it was creating flawless computer generated human beings - in that regard Beowulf was onto a bit of a winner. Well sort of...let's not go there. When you are dealing with movies where the humans are deliberately styalised, to hit average you need great animation, and you don't leave the cinema feeling impressed. To impress the audience you need a "wow" script, and that's where Space Chimps falls short. It has a good script, an entertaining script...but there is no wow factor to it.

I enjoyed this movie, and if I had a kid that was old enough I would take her to see it (well, I did take my daughter to see the movie, but she slept through most of it). Switch your brain off and turn your comedy appreciation dial down very low. You'll enjoy the movie better that way.

"C+"