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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, July 18, 2008

'Space Chimps' gravitates toward kids

By Roger Moore
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

"SPACE CHIMPS"

G

81 minutes

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If you're old enough to read this review, you aren't the target audience for "Space Chimps," a movie about chimpanzees sent in search of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

This movie looks for that sweet spot in every 7-year-old's heart for chimpanzees and movies about them. And the script manages the occasional wisecrack or movie lovers' inside joke to keep the grown-ups awake.

A space agency probe has slipped through a wormhole and found evidence for life elsewhere in the universe. Let's send astronauts! Wait, through a wormhole? They might not survive. Let's try it on chimps first!

Thus, the remnants of the chimp training program are given the job. And to drum up publicity, the grandson of the original space chimp, Ham, is added to the crew.

Ham III (Andy Samberg) is hot for Luna (Cheryl Hines). He barely tolerates the buff, by-the-book Titan (Patrick Warburton, naturally). But he does what he's told.

Meanwhile, on the distant planet, the probe has fallen into the handlike appendages of Zartog (voiced by Jeff Daniels, believe it or not), an outcast who then becomes a dictator. Will the chimps survive the trip and undo what evil the humans have done to these unsuspecting Teletubbies?

Kristin Chenoweth lends her chirpy Broadway-belter's voice to a cuddly little alien who just begs to be added to your child's nightstand.

The animation's decent (save for the humans, plastic and stereotypical). And Blue Man Group bopped up some of the music. Credit Vanguard Animation for lifting its game above "Valiant."