Fly Me To The Moon

Space, the final frontier.

These are the voyages of the Musca domestica (the common housefly to you and me).

Their mission: to blandly go where three chimps went just two months ago in the first ever computer animated feature film designed, created and produced exclusively for 3D projection.

Fly Me To The Moon re-imagines one of the proudest moments in modern American history - the Apollo 11 space flight - through the eyes of three young insects with a proboscis for trouble.

Director Ben Stassen and his team employ the 3D technology to jaw-dropping effect, taking us on an incredible journey through photo realistic environments with the tiny flies as they swoop through gargantuan blades of grass or buzz around discarded toys.

The blast-off from the Kennedy Space Center is a particular highlight.

Concerned, perhaps, that realistic houseflies might frighten children in the audience, the animators choose to 'cutesify' these tiny explorers to the point that they bear a closer resemblance to Smurfs than insects.

Screenwriter Domonic Paris follows the example of his winged protagonists and collects rotten one-liners from the recycling bin, regurgitating these pungent morsels again and again.

He ignores the creatures' brief life cycle to populate each frame with characters of all ages, including a geriatric whose claim to fame is flying up the nose of Amelia Earhart during her historic trans-Atlantic flight.

A black and white prologue (Cape Canaveral, 1961) sets the scene before the screen explodes into colour in the sweltering summer of May 1969.

Intrepid housefly Nat (voiced by Trevor Gagnon) and his best friends Scooter (David Gore) and IQ (Philip Daniel Bolden) yearn for excitement.

Inspired by his globetrotting grandpa (Christopher Lloyd), Nat encourages Scooter and IQ to join him on the voyage of a lifetime by hitching a ride inside the helmets of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

Nat's mother (Kelly Ripa) discovers the plan too late - 'Oh my lord of the flies, they are going to the moon!' - and like the rest of the world, she witnesses history in the making.

However, once Russian insects discover America's triumph, they dispatch operative Yegor (Tim Curry) to sabotage mission control, ensuring Nat, Scooter and IQ never make it back to terra firma.

Fly Me To The Moon has no comedy or drama to engage younger viewers or their parents, simply the visuals which - impressive as they are - cannot possibly sustain our interest for 84 minutes.

Vocal performances are solid but there are no obvious standouts.

Bizarrely, real life Apollo 11 astronaut Aldrin makes a live action cameo at the end of the film to debunk the idea of flies in space and draw attention to the absurdity of the entire enterprise.

Whatever next: screenings of The Santa Clause book-ended with testimony from a zoological expert to denounce the possibility of flying reindeer?

• Release Date: Friday 3 October 2008

• Certificate: U

• Runtime: 84mins