Space Chimps

Reviewed by: George 'El Guapo' Roush - 07.18.08

Monkey see, monkey doo-doo.

****DISCLAIMER**** This review is for entertainment purposes only. It is unfortunate you had to read this review. Now I must kill you and your entire family. Do not cry for them.

 

I love cartoons. In fact, I can honestly say I have loved cartoons since I was a little kid. Imagine that? A little boy who loves cartoons. I’m still fascinated by today’s artists and the cartoons they create. Yes, I will always be an old school hand drawn animation fan, but even when it’s created digitally like Pixar it’s all good. So I get really excited every time I go to a screening for a cartoon. I know in my heart of hearts that they will not be as bad as Bee Movie or The Land Before Time 75. Most, like Pinocchio and Horton Hears A Who, bring out great emotional joy. But every once in a while a film comes along that changes my perspective and opens my eyes. An animated movie that brings out emotions I thought I had repressed. Emotions of complete and utter hatred for all things living on this planet. Space Chimps is one of those movies.

 

Ham III (Andy Samberg) is the grandson of the greatest chimp astronaut on Earth. Ham III isn’t following in his family’s footsteps, settling instead to perform in circus acts for a living. When a probe gets sucked into a wormhole determined to be too dangerous for human travel, Ham is asked to serve his duty and go with astrochimps Luna (Cheryl Hines) and Titan (Patrick Warburton) to retrieve it. Traveling through the wormhole lands them on the planet Malgor, where the evil Zartog (Jeff Daniels) has taken the probe and used it to manipulate and intimidate the other Malgoreans into slavery. After Titan’s capture, Ham and Luna, with the help of new found friend Kilowatt, must cross dangerous terrain like the Valley of Really Bad Things to stop Zartog. Yes, the writers could not imagine anything cleverer than the name of Valley of Really Bad Things. It’s like entering a ‘Name Your Shit’ contest and all you could come up with was ‘brown stinky turd’.

 

Back on Earth, scientists Dr. Bob, Dr. Poole, and Dr. Smothers are doing their best to keep The Senator (Stanley Tucci) from closing down the space center when the scientists can’t give an answer on the whereabouts of the chimps and their very expensive space equipment. The jokes by the scientists are random and childish at best, relying on dumb pop culture references like pop locking to the Axel F. song from Beverly Hills Cop. Nobody in the film is given the opportunity to be likable. They just say their lines and move on to the next scene. The audience is never given a chance to emotionally connect with anyone. I can’t imagine children being attracted to this movie while Wall-E is still out in theaters.

"Oops, I just blew all the fun out of the airlock!"

 

While I will always appreciate the people who write and create cartoons, had one of the writers been in front of me during this screening I would have slapped him in the back of the head and taken the keys to his undeserving Mercedes SLK. Space Chimps is about as inspiring an effort as a made for DVD Disney sequel or a Saturday morning religious cartoon. Since I’m a complete professional I have to bite down on a small piece of wood like Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers to get past the pain of this God awful attempt at entertainment. Getting ten lashes would have actually been kinder by first time director Kirk De Micco.

 

Void of any comedy material or jokes that work, except for two seconds of a hamster on a wheel, Space Chimps is really, really boring to watch. The plot is typical of a rogue irresponsible teenager who learns life lessons at the end. It doesn’t help that Andy Samberg has a really boring cartoon voice and it shows in every line of dialogue. I’m really sick of celebrities doing voiceovers for animation just because they’re celebrities. Patrick Warburton dialed in his performance because he never has to change his line delivery. Every cartoon he’s done he plays the big dopey guy so he did what he was supposed to do. The character of Kilowatt (Kristin Chenoweth), who looks like an animated movie’s first attempt at a walking fetus, was one of the most idiotic alien characters I’ve ever seen. He was supposed to look cute, but he was stupid and annoying. All he did was scream. In fact, there was a lot of screaming by every character in the movie. I closed my eyes for ten minutes and wasn’t sure if I was listening to a cartoon space adventure or a snuff film.

 Kristen Chenoweth, I'm praying Ursula steals your voice next.

 

I have no hate for the animators. Some of the settings, like the planet of Malgor, were just beautiful. Although when I first saw the planet and its inhabitants, it was almost a carbon copy of those Pikmin games on the Nintendo Gamecube. So while it was nice to look at, I just thought of the video game and it kind of took me right out of it. I embrace creativity, but the game’s look was all over the screen. Maybe I play too many video games. While some of the animation looked great, at times it looked just awful. The voices never seemed to match mouth movement and it bugged the hell out of me. I noticed it every single time it was off.

 

No need to drag this review out any more than I have to. Space Chimps is one of the worst cartoon movies I’ve ever seen and I wish studios would stop green lighting every god damn idea that comes along because "It’ll be CGI and in the vein of Pixar." It’s a shame Fox ended up releasing this in the summer instead of Horton Hears a Who, which was one of the best non-Pixar animated movies I’ve seen in years. And the reason reviewers will now compare every computer animated film to Pixar is because Pixar would have left this chimp adventure floating in orbit with the rest of the garbage.

 

Your countdown begins as soon as you e-mail: george@latinoreview.com