3-D has yet to shake its cheese factor, though, to the credit of director Ben Stassen, an Imax movie pioneer, the new digital process often works with popcorn-dropping effect.
Fly Me To The Moon (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:76
Fresh:13
Rotten:63
Average Rating:3.9/10
Consensus: Flatly animated and indifferently scripted, Fly Me To the Moon offers little for audiences not comprised of very young children.
Australian Rating: G
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Australian Theatrical Release:
Sep 25, 2008 Wide
US Box Office: $13,592,311
Synopsis:
In this groundbreaking 3-D animated adventure, three young flies set off on a courageous mission to become the first insects on the moon by hitching a ride on the historic Apollo 11 space flight. ...
In this groundbreaking 3-D animated adventure, three young flies set off on a courageous mission to become the first insects on the moon by hitching a ride on the historic Apollo 11 space flight. Based on the actual transcripts and the original blueprints from NASA, the film’s stunning visuals and meticulous attention to detail introduce a whole new generation to the awe-inspiring achievements of the space program’s most momentous mission.
The year is 1969 and like everyone else in the world, Nat (Trevor Gagnon) and his pals IQ (Philip Daniel Bolden) and Scooter (David Gore) are abuzz over the upcoming launch of the first manned mission to the moon. Inspired by his Grandpa’s (Christopher Lloyd) oft-told tale of hiding aboard Amelia Earhart’s plane during her famed solo cross-Atlantic flight, Nat hatches a secret plan for the three young flies to stow away on the Apollo 11 rocket.
Thinking the trip will be over in a matter of minutes, the fly boys—and their earthbound families—are shocked to learn they will be in space for closer to a week. When a N.A.S.A. Ground Control official catches sight of the three winged stowaways, he instructs the astronauts to store them in a test tube for later study. But after an electrical short causes the ship’s engine to malfunction, the three intrepid insects manage to escape from their glass mini-brig just in time to discover the wiring problem and fix it.
After a difficult lunar landing, Nat tags along with Neil Armstrong on his legendary moon walk. Although the flies face a few more close calls, the mission appears to be a success. At least until Grandpa’s old flame Nadia (Nicolette Sheridan) arrives from Russia to warn him that her government, angry over losing the space race, has dispatched fly-spy Yegor (Tim Curry) to Cape Canaveral to sabotage the computer flight plans. With the Apollo hurtling toward Earth, it falls to Nat’s family to save the mission—and the trio of brave flies—from disaster.
--© Summit Entertainment
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Starring: Christopher Lloyd, Tim Curry, Nicollette Sheridan, Robert Patrick Benedict
Starring: Christopher Lloyd, Tim Curry, Nicollette Sheridan, Robert Patrick Benedict, Robert Patrick, Kelly Ripa, Adrienne Barbeau, Ed Begley
Director: Ben Stassen
Director: Ben Stassen
Screenwriter: Domonic Paris
Producer: Charlotte Clay Huggins, Caroline Van Iseghem, Gina Gallo, Mimi Maynard
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Reviews for Fly Me To The Moon
Anyone over the age of 8 is likely to be bored into madness by the lightweight puns that pass for real humor – WALL-E this ain't – and the film's overall "eh" quotient.
The cinematic equivalent of safety scissors -- all softened edges and no real point.
The film's respect for its source material goes only so far before reducing everything to the level of an old-style Saturday-morning cartoon, complete with stock characters finding themselves in stock situations.
For the first time in my experience, a 3-D movie felt bigger than my ability to take it all in.
Fine family entertainment with a particularly strong message for the small fry.
While it's hard to recommend it on purely creative merit, I suppose it would be a wonderful thing if these silly flies ended up pushing kids to investigate space travel and the legacy of NASA. Unlikely, but it's more comforting than fart and burp jokes.
Few would claim there are no flies on this one, but at least the outstanding 3D effects are some compensation for the dumbed-down inanity of everything else.
If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they tell a better story about sending some flies along for the ride?
The vocal characterizations aren't the problem here; the script and the animation are the problems, and in feature animation, you can't arrange more significant problems than those.
Fly Me to the Moon is not a great movie. It's not even a good movie. It some ways, it's barely passable. Yet my litany of criticisms will fall on deaf ears - so long as those ears are attached to children roughly 5 to 10 years old.
These flies drift lethargically from place to place, and the movie bogs down in their lackadaisical pace.
Cheap and cheerless, it all resembles a supermarket own-brand version of similar but much superior fare such as A Bug’s Life, making you wish for a plague of spiders to put them out of their – and our – misery.
The superior effects in Fly Me to the Moon reflect the talents of its creator, director Ben Stassen, who has been doing 3D for 14 years, mostly for science centers and museums.
This 3-D feature boasts anthropomorphic insects as its main characters, and they aren't particularly endearing or funny.
An immersive experience, perhaps the most impressive and least flawed use of the 3-D format, to date.
Latest News for Fly Me To The Moon
October 26, 2008:
LIWoman: Exclusive With Adrienne Barbeau ![]()
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August 05, 2008:
The official trailer, which isn't at all promising. ![]()
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July 20, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review ![]()
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