A canine
astronaut crashes back to Earth 50 years into the future in this relentless, sentimental adventure for younger kids
Here’s a daft, likable enough animation for small kids, with a smashing voice cast but slim pickings for grownups. Nick Frost does a nice job providing a voice for Buddy, a dog sent into orbit in 1969 to test a rocket. When he crashes back down to Earth, he has somehow time-travelled 50 years into the future, to a small
American town where an animal-hating meanie cop is cracking down on strays.
In this neighbourhood, the streetwise animals mock poor old Buddy for his dumb loyalty to the human who fired him off into space to certain death. Felix (Luke Evans) is a mog who has reinvented himself as TurboCat, a Batman-ish superhero – he even has an English-accented robot butler (elegantly voiced by Bill Nighy). Gemma Arterton is Cassidy, a revolutionary bunny, the leader of a ragtag group of animals fighting for four-legged rights. Ben Bailey-Smith is terrific as her head of military operations, a goldfish with little-animal complex, barking orders from inside his glass bowl.