In an age when Pixar rules the domain of wonderful animation, filmmakers and animators cannot get away with making cheap movies with hokey storylines, no substance, and subpar animation. Unfortunately, the new film Space Chimps falls hard into that realm.

The movie, from Vanguard Animation (Happily N'Ever After), is more like a really bad Saturday morning cartoon. No, I take that back; that's giving it too much credit. At least Saturday morning cartoons have some sort of fun entertainment value or decent animation, even if they are chintzy in story or character. Space Chimps fails to have any clear or coherent moral to its story, and disastrously plunks along with little to no entertainment.

You would think a movie about chimps already starts out on the right foot because, well, who doesn't like chimps? But for some reason, the animators chose to give the chimps pretty boring faces which aren't fun to watch or even look at. A trio of human scientists based on stereotype offer a few small but fun moments, giving us some mildly amusing quips and quotes. Other than that, we have a bunch of badly voice-acted, poorly animated characters prancing around in a cruddy story.

Here's a plot summary: when an American space exploration organization (NASA?) loses a space probe in a wormhole, the organization decides to retrieve it by using trained chimpanzees from their space program. A self-seeking senator (voiced by Stanley Tucci) thinks a famous face is needed for the chimps' mission, so he sends his people to recruit Ham III, a cocky, hotshot circus chimp, and grandson of the first chimpanzee in space.

The other three chimps in the space program, well-trained and eager to carry out an actual mission, are not exactly thrilled that Ham (voiced by Andy Samberg) is only interested in fooling around and dodging the mission.

After much reluctance, Ham and his crewmates, the lovely Luna (Cheryl Hines) and the big stiff, Titan (Patrick Warburton), ship off after the lost space probe. Their search leads them to an alien planet where the probe has landed and come under the control of a tyrannical bully, Zartog (Jeff Daniels). Zartog has been oppressing the inhabitants of the planet, and it's up to the three chimps to help set them free and defeat Zartog.

The story is pretty straight-forward, but it plays out more like a cheap, meandering video game with the characters moving about in quirky, stilted motion. The animation for the chimps and humans was bearable, but once the alien creatures showed up, I almost felt sorry for the filmmakers. It's as if the animators ran out of money or just completely lost their imagination when it came to creating and animating the alien creatures. This movie looks like Lisa Frank barfed on the screen, leaving a rainbow-colored world, filled with brightly-colored, metallic-skinned blobs with helium-filled voices.

I know I shouldn't critique the movie solely based on its technical merit, but there isn't much else to talk about as there wasn't much to the story; there's no real spiritual or moral substance, and even the tired jokes aren't enough to keep children engaged. Even the chimps themselves aren't particularly endearing or cute and cuddly like real-life chimps, nor are they inspiring heroes for children to look up to.

The three previously-mentioned scientists are among the few things I actually liked about Space Chimps. It was an odd trio of a man who seemed to be from India, a rotund, bespectacled man, and a geeky girl scientist. When these three scientists appeared, I'm pretty sure I was smiling. I actually wanted to see them more often. I enjoyed their screen-time because of the way they were drawn and animated. Their faces were great caricatures with wonderfully exaggerated features—the way cartoons are supposed to portray people. And although their humor can be a bit bland and childish, they are the delight of the film.

Even if this film were in 3-D, I have a hard time believing it would make it any better. The experience may have been a bit more bearable, but it would remain a terrible children's film, appealing to the primal nature with fart and poop jokes, ridiculous visual gags, and cheesy, unoriginal characters.