A group of young flies living on Cape Canaveral in the 1960s try to join the Apollo 11 crew and fly to the moon.

Summit Entertainment

Every movie studio out there wants a piece of that Pixar-DreamWorks computer-animation pie. Even start-ups like Summit Entertainment covet some of the millions that parents fork over to send their little darlings to this week’s child-safe/family friendly cartoon.

But just because it has that computer-assisted 3-D animated “look” that Pixar pioneered doesn’t mean that these animation upstarts are ready for their close-up.

Fly Me to the Moon is the last and least of the animations of summer, a good-looking, nostalgic but under-animated and thinly scripted child’s eye-view of that ancient history known as the Apollo program.

The story: A group of young flies living on Cape Canaveral in the 1960s try to join the Apollo 11 crew and fly to the moon. They’re inspired by their Grandpa (the voice of Christopher Lloyd), an aviator whose “dreams got swatted.”

“If it ain’t an adventure,” he preaches, “it ain’t worth doing.”

The kids concoct spacesuits, a plan to sneak into the capsule, an excuse to tell their parents. They think the flights last only a few minutes.

Meanwhile, some sneaky Russian flies (Tim Curry does a voice) are out to foil the mission.

There’s some lovely animation of the Cape in the 1960s, black-and-white footage not dissimilar to some of the “historic” animation in Space Chimps. The images from the moon are good enough to use as NASA simulations (if NASA hadn’t already been there).

The cleverest bit — a weightless ballet in space that pays homage to 2001 but is actually borrowed from The Simpsons.

It’s not accurate history and doesn’t have enough funny lines or bits to hold most adults’ interest. And there’s this odd disclaimer by real-life astronaut Buzz Aldrin at the end. Still, it looks marginally better than most TV or direct-to-DVD animation. Kids will dig the few gross-out jokes. And there’s ambition here, even if the whole enterprise feels cut-rate.

**Fly Me to the Moon

Voices: Christopher Lloyd, Tim Curry, Adrienne Barbeau, Ed Begley Jr.

Rated: G.