Starring the voices of Andy Samberg, Cheryl Hines. Written by Kirk De
Micco, Robert Moreland. Directed by Kirk De Micco. (G) 81 min. Opens
July 18.
Space Chimps, a computer-animated comedy about monkeys who go through a wormhole on behalf of the American space program — yes, this is a real movie — cues up “Also Sprach Zarathustra” about nine seconds into its running time. It’s perhaps another 15 minutes before the inevitable allusion to The Right Stuff, as primates in space suits walk purposefully towards the camera in slow motion.
Amazingly, there are no Planet of the Apes jokes, although the stalwart simian lieutenant voiced by Cheryl Hines looks a bit like Dr. Zira. The crew’s resident cut-up, meanwhile, looks a lot like Andy Samberg, who will undoubtedly look back on his first voice-over project and smirk (though “smirk” may also be his default setting — like Jimmy Fallon before him, he’s funniest when breaking up at his own dumb jokes).
Suffice it to say that there are more laughs in your average three-minute episode of Samberg’s SNL Digital Short series “Laser Cats” — set in a future where people use cats (real and stuffed) as guns — than in the entirety of Space Chimps, which is drab and mildly enervating in the manner of other Vanguard Animation productions (i.e., Valiant and Happily N’Ever After).