Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Film Review: ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ 1½ stars

“Fly Me to the Moon” boasts stunning 3-D animation, truly remarkable effects that will have audiences ducking in their seats to avoid the objects seemingly hurtling out of the screen at them.

That’s assuming there’s an audience for it. “Fly Me to the Moon” tells the story of the Apollo 11 moon landing — through the eyes of flies. (That would be many eyes, one assumes.)

Why? Flies are not, traditionally, your loveable little Disney-grade characters. More often they’re associated with the business end of a swatter. But they are small enough to stow away aboard the space flight. Thus Nat (Trevor Gagnon), IQ (Philip Bolden) and Scooter (David Gore) accompany the astronauts on their historic mission, becoming heroes to flies everywhere.

How weird is that? There are, what, billions of flies? And they live in and around ... better not to overthink this, probably.

The basic plot involves the three fly buddies trying to impress their friends by sneaking on board the Apollo. This proves easy enough, which is not exactly an advertisement for the sanitary quality of the space program. They even manage to repair a shorted-out circuit during the flight.

Their trip is especially meaningful to Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd), Nat’s grandfather, who, back in the day, sneaked aboard Amelia Earhart’s plane when she crossed the Atlantic.

Whatever. A subplot involves Yegor (Tim Curry), an evil Russian fly determined to sabotage the entire mission so that Americans won’t be the first flies on the moon. (Ed Begley Jr. provides the voice for Yegor’s assistant, the most appropriately named fly of the bunch — Poopchev.) Foiling Yegor’s plan will involve help from Grandpa’s former Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Nicollette Sheridan), who somehow manages to make the trip from Russia to the U.S. before Yegor’s henchmen (henchflies?) can wreck the mission.

There’s an odd bit at the end where the real-life Buzz Aldrin tells us that it was impossible for flies to actually get onboard a rocket. So much for that.

Yet as silly as the story is — this kind of thing makes you appreciate the guys at Pixar all the more — the 3-D is fantastic. When the rocket blasts off, it seems to surge right through the theater. Other things fly out at you, some part of the story, some just to remind you that director Ben Stassen and his team are good at this kind of thing.

Young children might hook into the characters, particularly the overweight Scooter, big on food jokes. But for most people, “Fly Me to the Moon” is not so much a movie as it is technology showing off.

Rated: G.