In
keeping with the increasing specialization of entertainment media, seniors who
want to bond with their 4-year-old grandkids now have their very own film, the
3-D non-spectacular Fly Me To The Moon. The crudely made CGI effort follows three
adventurous young flies who stow away on Apollo 11's 1969 moon shot, hoping to
be the first insects in space. But the computer animation looks 20 years old,
and the story's crass Cold War stereotypes feel even older.
Fly
Me To The Moon at
least makes interesting use of 3-D: Startling jabs at viewers' eyes are
replaced by long tracking shots that venture deep into the screen. Director Ben
Stassen (fresh off the likes of Haunted Castle and Wild Safari 3-D) is playfully specific about what
it might be like to sleep inside a rubber glove, get trapped inside a test
tube, or just be a tiny fly on a human-scale wall. And the carefully detailed
sequences of the multi-stage Apollo launch, landing, and moonwalk add some
you-are-there veracity to the nostalgia aimed at folks who were glued to the TV
when it was all happening.
But
the film still suffers from cheap plasticky design, a klutzy overall look, dim
preschooler humor, and a nearly impact-free story that thinks it's clever when
it steals cues from 2001. There are exactly two "jokes": The fat fly-kid talks about food
nonstop, and the lead fly-kid's mom faints incessantly. And then there's the
sheer eye-rolling intellectual laziness of the smart character named "I.Q." and
the set of competitive, Yank-hating Russian flies with Boris-and-Natasha
accents and broken-English lines like "How heppin this to us?" and "No wash
brain—I get smart!" The high-pitched voices, simple dialogue, easygoing
story, and mild gross-out humor (with plenty of creepy pink maggot characters)
all point at entertainment for very young kids—this film would fit fine
on PBS' Sprout network. But it's the cinematic equivalent of safety scissors—all
softened edges and no real point.