Staring Chris Potter and Richard Kind. Rated G.

What if James Bond was a primate who was good at extreme sports? Viewers of xXx, the 2002 action film with Vin Diesel, already have a good idea. For those who have been born in the interval, there is Spymate.

Spymate stars Chris Potter as ex-spy Mike Muggins, widower dad of 12-year-old Amelia (Emma Roberts), a precocious inventor. When Amelia is captured by an evil conglomerate intent on turning her science project into a doomsday device, Muggins springs into action. Not only can he draw on talents from his secret-agent past, Muggins has the help of his old CIA buddy-a butt-kicking chimpanzee known as Minkey.

This is a serviceable enough plot, which proceeds in exactly the fashion you would expect whether or not the hero was a chimpanzee. There's just enough gloss and location work to Spymate to make it a reasonable diversion for the wee. Older viewers might feel underwhelmed by the insufficiently violent explosions and vehicle stunts. Even the clan of ninja who drop in for the finale seem a bit feeble; they are led by the late Pat Morita, noticeably infirm when Spymate was shot (in 2003).

Grown-up audiences can perhaps best appreciate the film as an example of a canny local business. Spymate follows the MVP series of chimp-based sports titles produced and sometimes directed by Robert Vince, whose Keystone Films also created the massively successful Air Bud series of dog movies. Local observers can also have fun figuring out which supermarket stands in for Tokyo, or noting the use of Arthur Erickson's "egg crate" building on Georgia Street as the villain's headquarters. Sadly, followers of international news are likely to greet the idea of a CIA populated by apes with, at best, wry acknowledgement.