Space Chimps

Space Chimps is delightful from beginning to end.

The freewheeling, giggle-inspiring story and energetic vocal talent combine for above-average monkey business the family can enjoy.

It cleverly resonates with arguments favoring increased stature for chimpanzees (and all apes) with whom humans share a near-identical genetic blueprint.

Space Chimps may not be top-flight entertainment, but as kid movies travel, it’s unexpectedly engaging.

Space Chimps feels impatient -- drawn and edited as if the filmmakers were dying for the credits to roll, almost as if it were intended to serve only as a promotional launch pad for a cross-platform video game.

This animated movie, from the producer of Shrek and its sequels, is a compendium of silly puns and juvenile jokes, similar in nature to the late-night antics of Letterman, Leno, O'Brien and Ferguson.

Instead of taking the audience into a new dimension, Space Chimps takes it on a pleasant journey.

Kids might find the sight of monkeys -- sorry, apes -- wrestling in outer-space funny, but unless they're unusually sophisticated, much will probably just confuse them.

Its jokes, including a rancid bunch of banana and chimp puns, are so prehistoric they should be carbon-dated.

It'll keep the kids entertained for a while and give their parents a chuckle or two along the way.

If you're old enough to read this review, you aren't the target audience for Space Chimps.

The film is suitable for all ages but there's probably not enough fuel beyond cute chimps in Candyland to achieve orbit for the kids.

Like a poorly designed videogame, it's as much a test of endurance of repetition as anything else.

Give us a bunch of chimps and you're halfway to a laugh, at any age. But with cheapie effects and a barrage of monkey puns, Space Chimps is too often content with only going halfway.

Why would you take your kids to see Space Chimps, an uninspired animated feature about chimp astronauts, when you could take them instead to see Wall-E?

Despite its promising concept, the film is filled with lame pop-culture references and groan-worthy puns, and its technical aspects pale in comparison to those in the recent animated hits Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E.

Space Chimps isn’t exactly a Pixar-esque masterpiece, but it should serve its purpose of entertaining the young tots.

Space Chimps is an unfortunate combination of low-rent animation and formulaic storytelling, suitable only for very young viewers who are easily entertained by bright colors, loud noises and crudely animated chimpanzees.

It's not hilarious, but elicits more laughs than expected for a chimp movie.

It's no Kung Fu Panda, and it's certainly no Wall-E. But even though this summer has established a tough bell curve for animation, Space Chimps isn't bad.

While candy-colored graphics should dazzle kids, Space Chimps has little draw for audiences spoiled by the Pixar-given knowledge that CGI can entertain -- and not just stupefy -- moviegoers of any age.

Space Chimps is like a banana peel on the evolutionary ladder. The mere act of watching this witless, inept and irritating flick could cause you to devolve.

Space Chimps is notable for the low-cost ugliness of its animation and for a strange bargain-bin surrealism.

Chimps could have made a better movie.

It's the latest in a long line of animated comedies that are family-friendly, vaguely amusing and typically impervious to negative reviews.

It consistently goes for the cheap laughs, mining way too many jokes out of puns, pratfalls, and the occasional reference to poop (these are apes, after all).

The film either needed to be a lot wittier to make up for the way it looks, or a lot better-looking to compensate for the funny it isn't.

Space Chimps is animated filmmaking done on the cheap financially and creatively, and that leads to simple math: Tired Visuals + Lame Script + D-List Voice Acting = Dumb movie.

The plot couldn't be more boring, and the animation is unattractive, though augmented by super-bright colors, evoking the Teletubbies, which is not a good thing.

Drab and mildly enervating in the manner of other Vanguard Animation productions (i.e., Valiant and Happily N’Ever After).

Space Chimps just throws its facetious premise at the wall to sees what sticks. All that family audiences in their seats can do is watch it slide slowly downward, and count the monkey jokes.

I went in expecting to be disappointed, but even so, I was disappointed. Space Chimps, a digitally animated feature that gives every indication of having been written and drawn by its titular characters, is unfunny.