I took Bridget to the movies the other day. We didn’t have a whole lot to do over Labor Day weekend, and I didn’t have much faith that the weather would stay nice on Saturday. A quick look at the movie ads showed that “Space Chimps” was playing at the discount movie theater. Sounded like a good plan.
I would never expect the movie to win any awards. Not even in The Brians. In fact, I drifted off for a little bit in the middle. But when I asked Bridget whether she liked this movie or “Wall-E” better, she didn’t hesitate in choosing “Space Chimps.”
You might chalk this up to a kid just enjoying the thing she saw most recently the most, but I think one fact would make her pick this movie almost every time – it was a kid’s movie. “Wall-E” was an animated issue film marketed toward kids.
Some people might think I have something against “Wall-E” since I haven’t had too many nice things to say about it. I really don’t. I just think it has been overhyped a bit. I enjoyed the film, but the true greatness comes from the quality of the animation and the clever marketing, not actually how good the movie was. It was a little too simplistic to really capture adults and it didn’t have enough goofiness to make kids go crazy. The technical side was amazing, but that came at the expense of the story and entertainment value for me.
Alls I’m trying to say is that I feel bad for the people involved with “Space Chimps.” They will probably get a bad rap from some people because they came out with a simplistic, goofy kids movie at the same time parents were taking their kids to see a blockbuster about the environment. But the reality is, kids probably enjoy chimps building their own rocket much more than hearing how we’re destroying the earth.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, movies should just be about making us laugh.