See No Evil

This is a previous review of mine but until I publish new material, here's a blast from the past: September 29, 2008

Seeing as how Hurricane Ike inspired our school district to tack on another week (ending today) to the "devistation holliday" the boys and I found ourselves in need of something to do before school started again. The local dollar cinema solved that problem for at least one afternoon.

We went to see Space Chimps because the family with whom we went had already seen Kung Fu Panda and I thought it polite not to ask them to see it again when there was another movie available. Being no fan of Jack Black, I didn't mind so much.

Space Chimps is about astronaut-trained chimpanzees called into duty generations after the first monkey was sent into space. They were chosen because the worm-hole found in space near the moon would be too dangerous to use humans to venture into it. For some reason (which I forget) they decide to use the grandson of the first monkey sent into space as one of the astronauts. That one is currently working as a circus cannonball act and is happy where he is and doesn't really want to go into space.

From this point on the plot complications are predictable to the point where I found myself wondering about the writers of this movie. I wondered if at the writing sessions they simply went around the table and said "write down the FIRST idea you have for the next scene of this movie and that's what we'll use."

Now throw in three NASA-esque scientists taking turns giving straight lines to one another and a grumpy Congressman threatening to cut off funding as soon as the next thing goes wrong and voila! You have a computer animated children's monkey movie.

Was this a bad movie? No. It kept moving and didn't promise much to begin with. At one point it looked like it was about to get preachy but thought better of itself and backed off nicely. Thus instantly giving it a better rating than Happy Feet but then I'd give Once Bitten a better rating than Happy Feet ... wait, maybe that's going too far... well you get the idea. The NASA scientists were kind of funny in their own deadpan way. it was worth the $1.50 ticket price for me and my chillin's.

Space Chimps Trailer.
Once Bitten trailer.