Featuring the voices of Andy Samberg, Cheryl Hines, and Patrick Warburton. Rated G. Opens Friday, July 18, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Even though they fling their own feces and pull their puds in public, few things on this planet are more adorable than chimpanzees. In a welcome break from dressing them up in diapers and top hats, Space Chimps puts the human race’s closest living relatives in astronaut gear.

The action in this animated feature starts with a $5-billion NASA probe going missing on an inhabited distant planet that looks like a marginally less acid-addled version of the Teletubbies stomping grounds. Looking for a hero to head up a retrieval mission, the American government turns to the grandson of the first chimp to orbit Earth: smart-assed circus simian Ham III (Andy Samberg, sounding like a less-charismatic Owen Wilson).

For those whose idea of ribald hilarity consists of cartoon monkeys slipping on carelessly discarded banana peels, Space Chimps is funnier than the Farrelly brothers at a laughing-gas factory. But if you’ve been out of Huggies for longer than a decade, the movie will seem slapped together. Animation-wise, there’s nothing you won’t see done better by tuning into Treehouse TV, with the lack of effort—especially where the backgrounds are concerned—most notable once the primates finally touch down in a galaxy far, far away.

As for the jokes, Space Chimps isn’t entirely for kids, but there are only so many giggles to be wrung out of pocket protectors and the NASA nerds who covet them. Although the B-grade animation and decidedly non–star-studded cast won’t make anyone forget hyper-detailed, high-wattage Pixar extravaganzas like Cars, the film is ultimately likable enough to justify dragging the kids away from Curious George reruns on Kids CBC for a couple of hours. And best of all for parents, there’s only one reference to poop-hucking and no mention of monkeys choking their chickens.