Starring Trevor Gagnon, Christopher Lloyd. Written by Domonic Paris. Directed by Ben Stassen. (G) 89 min. Opens Aug 15.
I’m not one for zeitgeist surfing, but surely it says something that this summer has seen two computer-animated movies about non-human astronauts. First we got Space Chimps, and now there’s Fly Me to the Moon, which recounts the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing with the ostensibly delightful added detail that a trio of enterprising adolescent houseflies made it on board.
Speaking of ostensibly delightful details, Fly Me to the Moon is being advertised as the first animated feature produced exclusively for 3-D. Director Ben Stassen is considered a titan of the pop-up format and the 3-D imagery is indeed vivid, but the characterizations are barely two-dimensional. There’s the wide-eyed dreamer fly (voiced by Trevor Gagnon), his two buddies (one’s a geek, one’s pudgy), his tall-tale-telling grandfather (Christopher Lloyd) and his fainting-spell-prone mom (Kelly Ripa).
The impressive visual details (NASA gave the filmmakers access to the original Apollo 11 blueprints) don’t redeem the predictable storytelling: the stowaways make it on board by the skin of their thoraxes and they end up helping the oblivious crew members (including Buzz Aldrin in a sub-Simpsons cameo as himself); our hero takes one giant step for pest-kind; the soundtrack cues up Stravinsky’s 2001 waltz. The only unexpected note is struck by Aldrin, in an odd direct-address, live-action epilogue in which the second man on the moon assures us that the events depicted in the film could never have happened: it is, ahem, quite a Buzz-kill.