Umm it was pretty good. I like the bond between the monkey and the kid. I go to the school that the film was shot at. Cocoa Beach Jr/Sr High and i think that they could of done better with like the lunch scene. Totally different and i understand that its supposed to be from the 70s but still they could of used the real café. It looks good but i think that they could have done better. They played the school to be lame and plane but its really not. They did a good job in they gym. You can see that cocoa beach is the minutemen and that its cocoa beach. The hall way that he sits in while he is crying is exactly what it looks like. I have always thought that cocoa beach was a small town and it was lame excluding the fact that there is a RON JONS. (the biggest and the first) but i think that it was cool to have a movie done at our school and even more cool to have Barry Corbin in our town. I am a big fan expesally because he is in one tree hill. Hes great and very loving to the teens (James Lafferty and Chad Michael Murray, the opposite half brothers that don't get along) and cares about them and there family. His acksent is great. Congratulations Barry for doing so many movies. (104) and so many shows, as guests and stars. (32)!!!

A family film designed for children (seeing James Woods in this is almost odd), has the son (Alex Linz; Home Alone 3) of German scientist, Dr. Wilhelm von Huber (Woods, working an accent the best he knows how, even reverting to German on occasion when under angst) preparing the first Mercury capsule for space, not only competing with the Soviets but also an American company also interested in sending men to the moon (William Devane is presented as some Machiavellian business crook in suit, planning dastardly deeds for the rival NASA program). Wilhelm doesn't realize that in NASA is corruption in the form of Ralph Stanton (William Atherton, doing what he does best: playing an asshole and a scoundrel) who is working in concert privately with Thornhill (Devane) to sabotage the current program (cutting a fuel line so the capsule will turn into a ball of flame once under heat). Most of the film concerns Wilhelm's son, Billy (Linz) and the kid's bonding with chimp Mac. Mac survives all the testing and becomes the first chimp to successfully take a flight into space and return to the Earth. Mac's behavioral problems (just uncontrollable and hard to manage) are put at ease when it finds a pal in Billy. This helps Billy because he has been the victim of bullying due to his German lineage and has a hard time dealing with the absence of his mother who died when he was very young. Wilhelm's tireless work on the NASA space project has left him little time for his son, and the precious process he's missing out on is being filled by Air Force pilot, Alan Sheppard (the charismatic Mark Moses). Shepard plays "pitch the baseball around" with Billy, listens to him, and truly cares about the kid. Wilhelm's methods at holding his son accountable for his school work and not fighting back when ridiculed as a NAZI Kraut can be a bit frustrating for Billy (and attempting to keep him from working with scientist, Dr. Donni McGuinness (Annabeth Gish), and Mac; Donni is in charge of choosing the chimp that will take the capsule flight). Ultimately, Billy and Mac's bonding is the rescue of the program (a ham radio capturing a particular conversation that leads to Wilhelm and his German associates finding a problem on the capsule with Billy assisting them in the fix) and plays a major factor when the capsule enters space and the re-entry. The film plays up the suspense of Mac surviving dangerous scenarios of the space capsule program, with lots of family film music in the background to provoke the pounding of your heart and to enliven the sentimentality of Billy's friendship and affection with the chimp. The space program is handled with admiration and patriotic respect. Woods is Woods, no matter the film; he shows the appropriate reactions his character goes through, except this time it isn't the kind of part that necessarily evokes his usual magnetism on screen. For all intensive purposes, Woods is a nice guy going through a workaholic schedule that demands a lot of his time. Gish, like Mac, has a character Billy can confide in and she sympathizes for the kid. This is family fare that was made for kids, with loving nods to the space program that is often attractive to adults.

Motherless Alex D. Linz moves to Cocoa Beach with his father. Because his name is Wilhelm von Huber II, and daddy is James Woods with a German accent standing in for Werner von Braun, he's bullied by his classmates as a Nazi. Woods doesn't have a clue as to what he does, but Annabeth Gish, in charge of the chimpanzees who are being trained for the first Mercury launch notices the boy has an emotional connection with one of the chimps, and appoints him an official trainer.

It's actually a nice little child's-eye view of the beginning of the Space Race. It has a bit of politics, a bit of industrial espionage, and a decent, if light view of the goings on in the era, like a YA version of THE RIGHT STUFF. Plus a chimpanzee, of course. With William Devane, William Atherton, and Barry Corbin.