There’s no sign of Noah, let alone Him Upstairs, in this sweet but watery kids’ cartoon about the animals who got left off the Ark. Finny and his dad are fuzzy cute Nestrians, clumsy, flat-footed, trumpet-nosed beasts who don’t get past the Ark’s door security and sneak aboard with a pair of cat-like creatures called grymps.
For grown-ups watching, the point is that these are animals who found themselves on the wrong side of evolution, which is mildly interesting. But nowhere near as interesting as the fact that the animals who make it, embarking two-by-two, are mostly parents and kids – which doesn’t bode well for the future of the species they’re saving from the flood. There are a couple of laughs. A bored voice announces over the PA ‘Sailing time: roughly 40 days and 40 nights.’ But the film’s let’s-all-work-together message is samey and bland. By far the best thing about it is the monkeys: a sneering, nose-in-the-air chimpanzee butler and a knuckleheaded gorilla henchman.