MOVIE REVIEW: Fly Me To the Moon

I told someone recently that we had never taken our daughter to a movie in an actual movie theater. This was inaccurate, a function in part, of the fact that I never blogged about it.

Actually, it was August 2009, right after the wife had (thankfully) returned from her intensive two-week college experience. the three of us went to Schenectady to one of the theaters in the Proctors complex, the GE Theatre. There we saw a 3-D movie from the summer of 2008 called Fly Me To The Moon. And yes, Sinatra, or a Sinatra soundalike, does sing that familiar theme.

The story was about three young bugs who wanted to go to the moon, hitching a ride with these guys named Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, who looked, BTW, almost exactly alike, even without of their space helmets. Of course, the youngsters don't bother tell their mothers about their trip, who only discover their sons' mischief after they see them on television. The small travelers experience mild peril but (hardly a SPOILER in this type of film) make it back home safely.

The voicework is done by name stars such as Tim Curry, Robert Patrick, Nicollette Sheridan, and Ed Begley Jr., with Kelly Ripa and Adrienne Barbeau as a couple bug moms, and Christopher Lloyd as a bug grandpa.

The bad news is that it's a pretty dopey story with minimal animation techniques. It was painful to watch the real Buzz Aldrin at the end of the film explain to the audience that there were really no insects in space, let alone on the moon, in 1969. The good news is, given those limitations, the 3-D effect wasn't half bad, with bugs "flying towards us" at times. At least once the bugs were "flying from behind us" and toward the screen, and I instinctively shooed an insect away.

The mixed news was that it was short, maybe 50 minutes. At $8 a pop, it's a bit pricey, but then it was pretty tame fare for the child's first flick, so that was a plus.

Fly Me To the Moon must be a reasonably successful film at this venue, since it's showing again every weekend in January 2010. I can't recommend it, obviously, but it's less painful than, say, root canal. And I've HAD root canal.
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Oh, and when I misstated Lydia's movie experience, I was asked if we have surround sound at home. Well, no, we STILL have that 1987 19" GE color TV with no SAP or V-chip, which I turn on and off ---ready for this? manually --- and I am still NOT replacing it until it dies, I tell you, until it DIES.
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