A shruggingly amiable animated tale in which a group of chimpanzees sent to a faraway planet to test its viability for life end up helping to free an enslaved alien populace, Space Chimps is, in terms of plotting, a throwback to the animation of two decades ago, when storytelling lapses could be colorfully papered over and excused as merely part of medium.
After an unmanned American space probe gets sucked into a wormhole and lands on a faraway planet, NASA prepares to send a group of chimpanzees into outer space to try to re-establish contact with it. Engaging the arguable need for greater publicity and a sort of bloodline patriotism, rascally, carefree circus performer Ham III (voiced by Andy Samberg), the grandson of the first chimpanzee astronaut, is recruited to join the mission. Initially indifferent to the assignment, Ham joins up with Titan (voiced by Patrick Warburton) and Luna (voiced by Cheryl Hines), the latter of whom he quickly develops a crush on.
When the chimps land on said planet, they discover Zartog (voiced by Jeff Daniels), who has appropriated the powers of the crashed space rover, and enslaved his peers. Titan is captured, and so with 24 hours until their craft automatically relaunches back for Earth, Ham and Luna must work to thwart Zartog’s plans.
The directorial debut of co-writer Kirk De Micco, Space Chimps feels sketched out in very arbitrary fashion. After a brief bit showing Ham hamming it up in his circus surroundings, notably strange and jarring is the presentation of Zartog and the colorful aliens, which precedes any introduction of the rest of the chimpanzees, or the NASA crew responsible for the wayward probe. It also makes little sense that the space probe becomes a sort of catch-all instrument of torture and harassment — one that Zartog sometimes fully commands, and other times struggles with.
The main stories coalesce sooner rather than later, but the script centralizes conflict, funneling it in awkward fashion through a single Senator, who even school-age children grasp realistically wouldn’t be able to make good on his threats to immediately close down all space exploration. These narrative pendulum swings — at once grand, and totally empty — illustrate, in contrasting fashion, the care, depth and shading given storylines by Pixar, and the creators of other top-shelf animated fare.
In design, some of the color schemes and shading of the movie don’t seem to totally match. Even if there is great inconsistency with regards to opposable thumbs, the chimpanzees are rendered in more or less realistic, slightly cuddly form, with soft shading and rounded lines. Space Chimps‘ aliens are a bit more angular, and rendered in translucent blues, greens and purples; the result feels not merely like a different world, but of a wholly different tone, and film. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, G, 81 minutes)