At some point in your tale about an exiled prince who’s uncle usurped a throne and married the queen, you might wish to realize that either consciously or unconsciously you’ve been retelling Hamlet. Or in noting that Spark (voice of Jace Norman) is animated and has some goofy friends, you’ve at least channeled The Lion King. No? None of that? Fine. Time for your beating.
Spark was a baby when planet Bana [read: “Banana,” Spark and fam are apes] was split apart by a Space Kraken. A. Space. Kraken. Really. That’s what you’re goin’ with? The Space Kraken is capable of making black holes and then moving on. When unleashed, it literally tore their whole planet into half a planet and several large shards. I don’t know where to begin with the bad science. It would be one thing were it all tongue-in-cheek, like Ratchet & Clank, but Spark: A Space Tale Tail lives in the Kraken reality and never looks back.
Teenage Spark lives on the garbage dump shard with caretakers Vix (Jessica Biel), a kung fu fox, Chunk (Rob deLeeuw), a mechanic/garbage disposal warthog – hey, fellas, you sure that isn’t a meerkat and a warthog?—also there’s a robot caretaker, Bananny (Susan Sarandon). Of the four characters I’ve named, Bananny is the only one I could stand to see in another film. Spark longs to be Bana’s UFC champion or would if he could focus for more than three seconds. His training is dashed by adventure. Seems mom the queen (Hilary Swank) needs to distance a Kraken locator from King Zhong (A.C. Peterson), who –with just half a tiny planet—has become the most feared in the universe.
Long story short, Spark ends up needing to seek the Kraken in order to make things right. Well, kid, you’d better “get Kraken” then. Geez, do I have to write these things for you?
I saw several attempts at humor in this film. The deliberately undersized and insecure tyrant Zhong is played for incompetence and overcompensation. Zhong has an enormous deep-voiced lady gorilla as an enforcer (this is supposed to be funny); later, we encounter The Captain (Patrick Stewart), a remnant of the old guard who is constantly struck by lightning. And I’ll be damned if I heard so much as a guffaw in the theater when “humor” was happening. I guess I have to give credit for the attempt, but like so much of Spark, this film is a tired rehash of more inspired space odysseys.
Hear me out – what if you made more of a Space Monkey Hamlet? Instead of distracted, would be X-Gamer Spark, make him brooding, conflicted. Add a ghost. Add a 
suicidal girlfriend and an opportunistic mother. Add true and relatively bloodless political intrigue. And then cover it all with monkey values like coveting fire and flinging poo (“To fling or not to fling…”). How could it be worse, really? It’s got to be at least as mediocre as Gnomeo & Juliet, yes? Yeah, odds are I’d pan that, too … but at least I’d have more fun doing it.
When it comes right down to it, I just couldn’t find any reason to want to keep watching Spark: A Space Tail. Despite the deep outer space setting, there isn’t a single original thought in this entire film, and none of it is an improvement over the original material. So here I’m ending with a short list of gambits Spark could have employed to drag it up to mediocrity: a musical number (or five), a non-violent resolution, a truer adherence to Hamlet, a cagier villain, or for God’s sake, anything –and I repeat—anything that would make me care about this film.
♪Ignore me when I sleep
Ignore me in my seat
Something woke me like a tease
Trying to appease
Ignore me. Spark, puh-leaze, Hey
Monkey. Flunkee. Stunk-ee
Don’t you know I’ll doze through Spark the Monkey
Vix the fox
Chunk the hog
We made Swank queen ape
I know about that
There is one thing you must be sure of
I can’t watch any more
Threader, don’t you show more of the monkey
Monkey. Flunkee. Stunk-ee
Anymore and I will Spank that Monkey♫
Rated PG, 90 Minutes
D: Aaron Woodley
W: Aaron Woodley
Genre: Knockoff knockoff Shakespeare
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Pre-filtered children
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The Planet of the Apes
♪ Parody inspired by “Shock the Monkey”
