BY GLENN WHIPP >FILM CRITIC

You had a problem with an animated movie about a rat cooking in a kitchen? Then you'd best steer clear of "Fly Me to the Moon," a 3-D cartoon featuring three "cute" little flies joining the Apollo 11 crew for the first lunar landing.

It's an utterly bizarre idea for a movie, probably one that only the gang at Pixar could pull off. What's here is a stiffly animated feature with a sensibility and humor that's straight out of a '60s sitcom, as if the filmmakers had watched a "Courtship of Eddie's Father" (or maybe late-period "My Three Sons") marathon before making the movie.

Housefly Nat (voiced by Trevor Gagnon) has spent his life listening to his grandpa (Christopher Lloyd in full "Doc" Brown mode) speaking of his life of adventure. (Grandpa helped Amelia Earhart on her solo flight across the Atlantic by buzzing up her nose.) Nat longs for excitement, too, but his mom (Kelly Ripa) cautions: "Dreamers always get swatted."

Well ... yes. They're flies. Nevertheless, Nat and his nerd friends IQ (Philip Daniel Bolden) and the chunky Scooter (David Gore) decide they want to be "astro-nuts" and hitch a ride with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Along the way, they help repair a system short and enjoy a zero-gravity moment set to Strauss' "Blue Danube." (Less a reference to "2001" than "The Simpsons" episode where Homer eats potato chips.)

There's also a strange, underdeveloped subplot involving some commie spy flies who speak in thick Ruskie accents and could be seen as something of a nod to "Rocky and Bullwinkle" if they were actually funny. What humor there is in this gentle, bland movie usually comes from puns with the dung-loving Scooter bemoaning his "meatball-ism" and plenty of "Lord of the Flies" references.

And lest anyone watching be confused by the story, the actual Buzz Aldrin appears at the end of the film just to let everyone know that no actual flies really stowed away aboard Apollo 11. Given that Aldrin once famously punched a guy for saying the moon landing was a hoax, I'm not going to argue with the guy.

FLY ME TO THE MOON

G:

Starring: Christopher Lloyd, Kelly Ripa, Buzz Aldrin.

Director: Ben Stassen.

Running time: 1 hr. 29 min.

Playing: Area wide.

In a nutshell: Debatably cute houseflies stow away aboard Apollo 11 in a movie whose sensibility feels straight out of the lunar landing era.