But he's not the only one falling on hard times. NASA is now under the dictatorial rule of an evil senator (Tucci) whose reaction to the discovery of a wormhole to the other side of the universe is the sour sound bite, "My constituents care about potholes, not wormholes!" When a space probe disappears into the anomaly, he orders the three remaining NASA scientists (who are the funniest thing in the movie, far more amusing as characters than anything the titular stars do) to send another vessel in after it.

A crew of chimps is drafted in order to avoid risking harm to human beings, and Ham III, who has far more marquee value than the primates the senator derides as chimp nerds, finds himself placed aboard against his will. The others are Cmdr. Titan (Warburton, who channels his inner Tick) and Luna (Hines, who is an off-the-rack spunky female).

Ahead of them? The goofily evil Zartog (Daniels), who has parlayed the crash-landing of Earth technology into a form of super-villainy in which he forces his people to build a Las Vegas casino. ...

Night at the Chimprov

CGI animation is still so dazzling to the eyes, even when it's not done with distinction, that it's truly difficult for any new film of the kind to sink below a C grade just on general principle. This is true even when the alien planet where most of the action is set is all hideous purples and greens, and one key player, Kilowatt (Chenoweth), is a determinedly over-cute creation who seems to have been thrown in to appease under-3s who find accident-prone chimps too adult to identify with.

It helps that amusing, self-aware moments come by every few minutes, and sometimes more often than that. For instance, this reviewer was just beginning to wince at Titan's penchant for inserting the word "chimp" into everyday phrases that don't require its presence when Ham III expressed irritation at exactly the same thing. Nice going, Ham. That almost makes up for how annoying you are the rest of the time.

There are the usual number of pop-culture references, including apes who boldly go where no ape has ever gone before, and a journey through the space warp that invokes the Ultimate Trip section of 2001: A Space Odyssey and therefore baffles not only the little ones in the audience, but also, we wager, the majority of their parents.

Even that's likely to provoke more of a reaction than the moment when Titan turns to Ham and demands, "Are you David Bowie?" Were this a film with the narrative complexity and adult appeal of Pixar's efforts, that might even qualify as a grace note. As it is, it's unlikely that people who wander into this one by mistake will hear much laughter from moments that don't involve chimps yelling, "Wooooaaaaahhhhhh!" while falling from high places. The movie's not very good, nor very bad. It just is.