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SPACE CHIMPS

Starring (voices of) Andy Samberg, Jeff Daniels, Cheryl Hines, Kenan Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Kristin Chenoweth and Patrick Warburton

Directed by: Kirk DeMicco

Rated G

By John Delia

The good thing about the animated comedy Space Chimps is that it plays to both child and adult levels. The story may be a little silly, but the fun of it being played out on the big screen makes it a winner. Topped off with some great one-liners, the adults will be laughing as much as the kids. And best of all there’s no offensive language or other unpleasant things to which children should not be exposed.

The story surrounds Ham III, grandson of the first astronaut chimp that blasted into space leading the way to manned space flight. Ham III has lived in his grandfather’s shadow and has used the relationship to further his career as a stunt chimp in the circus.

In an attempt to land a probe on a far distant planet, the U.S. Space Administration’s spaceship enters a wormhole and lands on a planet but looses its signal. If this project fails, space exploration will suffer a major setback. Not wanting to risk human astronauts that will have to traverse the wormhole in order to get to the probe and get it working, they decide to use chimps. When they hear that Ham III is working with a circus, they recruit the reluctant slacker chimp for the space adventure. But, retrieving the space probe is harder than they expected, especially since the evil dictator Zartog (Daniels) on the planet is using it as his way to control the population and loving it.

The voices of the characters are amazingly good and their performances make the film work. Combined with a snappy script, the film plays on both adult and child levels making the film a great fun. The one-lines from Titan (Warburton) like ‘Chimp off the old block,’ ‘glob happens,’ and ‘I picked a bad week to go off bananas,’ are hilarious coming from the commander chimp who has the duty of getting the astronauts safely back to Earth.

The animation of Space Chimps is really well done, but should have been made in 3D. You can see that at many times there are a lot of things coming at the screen and probably was the intention of the makers to attempt the process, but although it does not distract, I believe it would have been a more magical experience if they had it in 3D.

If you go see this film, make sure you take children along, as they will help with the laughter in scenes with which you probably would just be entranced. There are a lot of great alien beings and some fun adventure situations.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Go see Space Chimps it’s a fun film that should make you laugh no matter how old you are.