As the title intimates, there's plenty of monkey business in this outlandish adventure, but the screenplay and the animation lack the necessary sophistication to engage audiences, young or old.

Indeed, when one NASA-bound chimpanzee boasts "Space is in my veins" and his sidekick quips, "And between your ears," he might as well have been talking about any of the primates in the film.

Performing circus chimp Ham III, grandson of the first primate in space, is recruited by NASA to retrieve the missing Infinity Space Probe, which has been sucked through a wormhole onto the other side of the galaxy. Ham joins astro-chimps Titan , Luna and Comet, but unfortunately, there are only three seats in the space shuttle Horizon, so technical genius Comet is forced to remain behind at NASA HQ to guide the mission from the ground alongside Ham's mentor, Houston.

Emerging through the wormhole, Ham, Titan and Luna crash-land on the planet of Malgor where the megalomaniacal Zartog is exploiting the Infinity Space Probe to enslave the rest of the population.

So the chimps join forces with lovable alien Kilowatt to outwit Zartog and restore peace. The planet of Malgor is bursting with lurid colour but devoid of imagination.

Locations including the Valley of Really Bad Things fail to live up to their billing and the eruption of a volcano is a huge anti-climax. The action set-pieces are slugging, blighted with clumsy, unappealing visuals that would be an embarrassment on the small screen, let alone
on the vast canvas of
a multiplex.