Fly Me to the Moon

It is pretty surreal what these flies can do... eh well... this is a cartoon, so anything can happen in it.

At first I must tell you that I love animated movies. Unfortunately this year's repertoire is very weak. This cartoon is nothing but a list of flaws:

1) I quoted the tag line. It suggests that this movie has great 3D effects. Well, I did not see any, at least not something special I never saw before.

2) The "flies" in this movie look nothing like real flies. At least they could've make them black. But cyan flies, seriously? With giant heads and slim torsos?

3) The story. I guess it was written for 6 year old kids. I could tell it in two sentences it is so over simplified.

4) Excessive patriotism. For example: "They are American files after all!" Oh, give me a break.

No big action scenes, no adult humor that the kids don't understand, this is just a nice calm cartoon that you can watch with your kids before bedtime. It won't rev them up or get them to jump up and down. Thy might even like flys after watching this flick.

Postitives, The color palette of the movie, reminds me of a bygone era. The scenery is pleasant. Music is calm.

Parental guide, The flies use the word Crap a few times and one of the flies refers to the others as idiots.

Plot is slow but it does tell a good story about the space launch that put a man on the moon. It is not a Pixar or Disney high end animated feature that we are so programmed to expect in animation nowadays. It just a slow nicely done movie for young kids...it probably not for you if you are an adult and watching it without kids.

"Fly Me To The Moon" has to be the worst animated film I've seen in a LONG TIME. That's saying something since I have taken my son to see every animated release for the last 4 years now. The story is to be generous...trite. The voice acting is atrocious, Too cute sounding. The humor is of the Romper Room variety. The animation is passable for a Nickolodeon type of cartoon but this is being released on the big screen not cable television.

It gets a 2 only because of it's OK 3-D visuals. Some of the scenes had a mildly stimulating image but We've seen much better in the past. I also question the insistence of the filmmakers to have characters fly away from the screen rather than into it in most of the scenes. While that is interesting at first it became tiresome after the 3rd or 4th time. It seemed to smack of indifference to me on the part of the creators.

I will say this though, It had a pretty cool soundtrack. And for the record my son wasn't too crazy about it either. Bad movie.

1st the good news. The 3-D is spectacularly well done, and they don't go for the gotcha gimmicks. The film is based on the true story of the high point in human history, and even features one of the actual participants in that story: Buzz Aldrin.

And now the meat of the matter: It's about FLIES, for krissakes! Flies with big, googy human eyes, true, but flies nonetheless. Remember when I likened the "Underworld" movies to rats vs. cockroaches? That wasn't intended as praise, and I never dreamed anyone would take it literally. This one's got even less empathy going for it. Baby maggots? Ugh. In one of those odd confluences of Hollywood groupthink, this flik was evidently on the drawing boards at the same time as "Space Chimps", also about critters in space.

Go rent "Apollo 13" and see a 9-rated movie about the REAL space program (RIP).

Honestly, I did have a feeling from the trailer that Fly Me to the Moon wasn't going to exactly my style. But I had the opportunity to see it today for free and I just wanted to give it a fair chance, I don't know what's with this year, but it doesn't seem like all the animated films are gold, now we had WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda, that's about it when it comes to the good animated films, but then we had Space Chimps and now Fly Me to the Moon that are just average. See, what bugs me is that this movie is just for kids, I think we should have those kind of films, but this was semi-boring. The humor didn't even seem to exist, also flies are not cute or interesting to watch and just because a film is made for 3-D doesn't make it a great film. I'm not trying to hate on this film because the story is decent, it's just the way it's told that makes it a little dull.

Nat, I.Q., and Scooter are young flies who are just day dreamers, but Nat dreams of going to the moon one of these days. When he talks to his adventurous grandfather, he decides to just go for it. He talks I.Q. and Scoother into it as well, they sneak onto the rocket ship that is taking Americans to the moon for the first time. But with the mothers freaking out at home and Russian flies who can't stand the idea of these American flies getting the credit, it may not be a happy trip home.

Fly Me to the Moon is alright for the kids under 7, that's it. Like I said, I think we should have movies that are aimed for kids only, but this was just dull and didn't interest me. The humor is very tame and the characters aren't the best to relate too. There are a couple of nice things about the movie, like the animation is beautiful and the story is fun. Even though 3-D doesn't make a movie wonderful, it does make it a lot of fun to watch and a lot more interesting to look at. Over all, I'd say to see this as a matinée if you want to see it on the 3-D screen, otherwise, it's a rental, there's nothing special about it, but it's a nice movie.

5/10