Shawn's Space Chimps Review

2008 Movie #91 - Space Chimps

The sheer existance of Space Chimps is kind of a mystery to me. First off, the fact that this thing is seeing a theatrical release at all is kind of amazing. Add on that it's getting a summer release, plus one that is in many theatres makes it that much more incredible. This movie is the absolute definition of a January or September dumping ground movie. The studio must have had faith in it though, at least a little bit because there is a lot of merchandising to go with this movie. I've seen books, toys, a video game, so they must have backed it a little right? It's hard to say though because this movie opened...against fucking Batman.

I understand the idea of counter programming, releasing something completely different against a huge movie so that people have something else to see. For example, Mamma Mia opened the same day as The Dark Knight and that was a great move. Middle aged women don't want to see Batman, they want to flock to Mamma Mia. So that makes a lot of sense. However with Space Chimps, the main target is kids and the problem with that is that these same kids want to go see fucking Batman, not Space Chimps. I can't imagine a parent ever choosing to go to this one instead, even if the child flat out asked.

"Dad I wanna see Space Chimps"
*dad proceeds to smack kid*
"I'm sorry what movie did you say to wanted to see?"
"B..Batman?"
"God damn right Batman."

Especially when you can take your kids to great movies like Kung Fu Panda or Wall-e, then Space Chimps reason for being really is brought into question. But the real question of course is, is it any good? Well no it isn't, but it's not quite the cinematic raping I was expecting it to be, so points to it for that I guess.

The movie goes the exact opposite route of Wall-e. Wall-e was a very story and character driven piece with a fairly slow pace in the beginning. It also didn't go the animation kiss of death and just throw out a bunch of lame puns and pop culture references. The animation was of course to beautiful to look at in that movie as well, some of the best I have ever seen in a movie, hands down.

Space Chimps just starts out batshit crazy, throwing both of those things and more at the audience. The story is barely existant, the animation is barely above a direct to DVD cartoon, and you could give a shit less about any of the characters. Oh god you would not believe the monkey puns in this thing. I can't even remember them at this time but they are just terrible and have no place in any movie ever. They think it's made better by having a character acknowledge how bad they are, but no.

The pop culture references are of course thrown out in full force too. The weird thing is, they are pop culture references that are not only dated, but just fucking ancient. Most young kids would have no idea what the shit the movie was even talking about. I mean Axel F, the macarena (although in this movie it's called the "monkey-rena, so theres one of those puns I was referencing earlier, pretty fucking hysterical huh), these are the types of things this movie goes after and it's really just sad.

However there are a couple of amusing bits here and there, with Andy Samberg getting a couple of decent, maybe even improvised one-liners in there. Jeff Daniels also puts on a pretty good performance as the villain. The rest of the voice acting is pretty by the numbers, with Patrick Warburton doing the same thing he does in just about every cartoon movie ever made ever. The movie was also surprisingly racist in a way, with some pretty bad stereotypes/voices done with a couple of characters.

Overall I couldn't quite bring myself to hate this movie but I can't recommend it either. There are just so many better options out there now, and will still be when this thing hits DVD, so unless you have yourself one of these blogs, there literally is no reason for you to ever watch this movie.

**/5