Hollywood is over the moon about space movies this summer, with "WALL-E," "Space Chimps" and, now, "Fly Me to the Moon."

It's a 3-D animated adventure about three flies who stow away on Apollo 11 as it rockets to the moon in July 1969.

Nat, the ringleader, is the grandson of a winged pioneer who likes to tell (and retell) the story of how he accompanied Amelia Earhart on her historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, when she started to fall asleep, he flew up her nose to make her sneeze and stay awake -- perhaps while she pondered the lifespan of a fly, a subject not addressed here.

Nat and his pals, a brainiac named IQ and food-loving Scooter, hatch a plan to join real-life astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, but they get more than they bargained for.

"Fly Me to the Moon," which opens with the song of the same name, reaches for the stars when it uses its 3-D elements and re-creates the moon mission. But that and a message about dreaming big aren't enough to sustain the movie, so it cooks up a Cold War subplot about Russians trying to stop America from landing on the moon.

All that accented talk about "Mother Russia" seemed to zoom over the head of preschoolers at a preview; instead, they loved the pink maggots who snuggled with Grandpa, played with their food and chanted in unison. They also weren't as thrilled as older moviegoers to relive Armstrong's "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" moment.

"Fly Me" has a G rating and skews younger than "WALL-E," and it's the 3-D animation that saves it from the mundane. And while it does nothing to clear up the Earhart yarn, it does produce Aldrin at the end to clarify the question of high-flying hitchhikers.

• Also opening today: "Mirrors," starring Kiefer Sutherland, was not screened for critics.