Even if a movie is made for children, it doesn't have to be dumbed down for them. However, all too often kiddie flicks are little more than 90 minutes of loud noises, pretty colors, and regurgitated pop culture references. I hoped the cartoon adventure Space Chimps would encourage youngsters to reach for the stars and let their imaginations soar. Unfortunately, imagination is one of many elements lacking in this film, which comes across as the lamest excuse for a family movie since Doogal reared its poorly-animated head.

Years after a chimp named Ham made history by being the first being to travel into outer space, his grandson, Ham III (voice of Andy Samberg) is carrying on his legacy -- well, sort of. Rather than embarking on dangerous missions and exploring the farthest reaches of space, Ham III sits comfortably as the star of his own show at the circus. But his time to live up to his grandpa's legacy comes when humans make their greatest discovery yet. After being sucked into a wormhole, an unmanned probe has crash-landed on a uncharted planet, for the first time showing signs of life other than ours in the universe. Since the journey is too perilous for man to make, Ham III and two other chimps, spunky Luna (voice of Cheryl Hines) and thickheaded Titan (voice of Patrick Warburton), are chosen to hook up with the probe and explore the strange new world it's landed on. The primate pals will have little time for sightseeing, as they soon find their hands full tangling with Zartog (voice of Jeff Daniels), a cranky alien who's hijacked the probe and is using it to enslave the planet's inhabitants to do his bidding.

Space Chimps is kid's stuff all the way; aside from a random and almost refreshingly clever David Bowie reference, there's little incentive for parents to join their little ones in watching the movie instead of dropping them off at the theater for a couple of hours. But once again, we have a movie serving more as a distraction than as something kids can both enjoy and learn a little something from. However, they will most certainly get a kick out of it. The animation is a little cheap but fairly eye-catching, the pacing is fairly zippy, and there's a pleasant lesson about not being afraid to become the person (or, in this cast, chimp) you were meant to be. In any case, it's better for children to see  something with a positive message like Space Chimps than Bratz, which teaches its target audience to bow down to conformity.

Still, other than the tired chestnut sitting at its core, Space Chimps is devoid of any true content. It's the cinematic equivalent of junk food, good to satisfy a momentary hunger but worthless as far as providing something truly nutritious to munch on. There's hardly enough story to sustain twenty minutes. The rest of the movie appears padded with tiresome, go-nowhere action sequences and jokes that run the gamut of chimp-related gags. There's an undercurrent of sarcasm to the proceedings, but it seems thrown in as an afterthought, as if the filmmakers were desperate to cover up the fact this was the best they could do. The voice acting is spirited, but it's not enough to overcome how predictable and one-note the characters are. Even kids who've never seen a movie in their lives will have a good idea of where the plot is going to take them.

Although Space Chimps was not made for moviegoers like me, its grade-school target audience will more than likely have a good time while watching it. But why settle for a run-of-the-mill feature like this when there are other, better animated films for children? Just think of what you'd rather have your kids watching: something like Spirited Away, which will engage young viewers and leave them visually satisfied, or  Space Chimps, where the only thing they'll walk away with is a few more monkey jokes than they knew before.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by 20th Century Fox and rated "G" by MPAA.)