Film

People who make kids’ movies bank on the fact that children are easy critics, and that these newbie filmgoers will gleefully sit through anything with bright colors and a fart joke or three. It’d be nice to imagine, however, that after enduring this attempt at selling fourth-rate 3-D animation as entertainment, ripped-off toddlers would react properly and take to the streets en masse. After grabbing their fake torches and plastic pitchforks (courtesy of the Fisher-Price My First Angry Mob™ set), the rioting tykes would storm the studio and demand their money back, with some juice boxes thrown in to compensate for emotional distress.

 You’d think that this tale of three houseflies that stow away on the first Apollo 11 flight was made with contempt for its audience, as if mechanically stiff animation and clichéd moralizing (“If it ain’t an adventure, it ain’t worth doin’ ”) would be given a pass just because a rocket appears to be coming right at you. But the only thing that Ben Stassen’s toon proves is that mediocrity is no different in three dimensions than it is in two, and that the usage of the “Blue Danube” waltz in zero gravity has officially been stripped of its grandeur.