If there’s a lesson to be learned from Fly Me To The Moon, it’s this: unless you have a budget of 100 million dollars or more to work with, stay the hell out of the digital animation business. You’re running up against two especially well-funded studios (Pixar and Dreamworks) and an audience long since numbed to the novelty of computer animation. The talent is something, but if you haven’t got the money shots, then you’d better pack up and go home.
Which, you can only conclude, is exactly what the producers of Fly Me To The Moon should have done. While it might have been possible to endure the boring characters, terrible jokes, and cultural worldview that was already retrograde by the time the film was set (1969), going along with its uniquely and singularly uninvolved visual look is too much to ask.
The plot is basically described by the title, but for those of you who need further reason not to see this film under any circumstance, it goes a little something like this: there are some flies that live near the launch pad in Florida (for your convenience they have broken down into the broadest possible stereotypes: the leader, Nat (Trevor Gagnon), the smart one, I.Q. (Phillip Bolden), and the fat one, Scooter (David Gore). When Apollo 11 goes to the moon, these flies go along with them. They don’t really help the mission in any way (okay, at one point they plug something in). I guess there are some evil Soviet flies pretty late in the game, but otherwise, that’s really it. And Christopher Lloyd is the crusty old grandfather of one of the flies. Plus, for those of you demanding subtlety, the family name is the McFlys (get it? GET IT?!?!). For some reason Tim Curry and Kelly Ripa decided to come along too - don't ask me why.
The first of many serious problems with the film rests with their choice of animal. Flies? Seriously? You’d think they’d have gone with something that didn’t have eight eyes, and didn’t die approximately twenty-four hours after being born, but that’s really neither here nor there. This film’s approximation of what a fly looks like is so profoundly creepy (we’re talking The Polar Express creepy) that it prevents even the slightest degree of engagement with the film. It probably also would have helped if they had chosen an animal that was in any way associated with the space program, such as chimps or dogs, but considering the kind of reviews Space Chimps got, that might not have made too much of a difference.
There are other problems, too. Even today’s younger Disney Princess generation of girls feel put off by the constant fainting of the vast majority of the female characters. There are also innumerable moments where you can’t help but feel as if the screen-writers were simply at a loss for words, and decided to insert lines like “you did it,” and “insert repeated exposition here.” Not exactly, but seriously, its pretty close.
By far the strangest scene of this film, though, takes place right before the end credits, when astronaut Buzz Aldrin (yes, the real Buzz Aldrin, who apparently played himself) comes out to assure us that there were no actual flies on board Apollo 11. He’s not even animated. What? Was this something that people were actually worried about? And he’s serious. When a movie feels that it needs introduce a credible source to explain how everything depicted in it was, in fact, totally impossible, you have to wonder about that movie’s self-esteem. Or at least its competence.
It should probably be noted that the film is in 3D. In fact, this is the film's tagline is "First Ever Animated Movie Created For 3D." But you know what? You have to see watch it with those red and blue 3D glasses, which for those of you who aren't disoriented with those in live-action, just wait until you see it in animation. It's like 3 hangovers at once.
"Fly Me To The Moon" is on sale December 2, 2008 and is rated G. Animation. Directed by Ben Stassen. Written by Domonic Paris. Starring Buzz Aldrin, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Curry, Robert Patrick, Kelly Ripa.
