If he hadn't been a flesh-and-blood human space pioneer then "Buzz Aldrin" would have been a great name for the first - or should that be second - fly on the moon.

As it is, pilot Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr - who followed NASA commander Neil Armstrong onto the surface of the moon on July 16 1969 - does pop up at the end of this family fare to assure audiences that no flies were trapped on the Apollo 11 space mission.

Quite why anybody would believe that a trio of houseflies had made it as tiny stowaways in the command module is anybody's guess, but genial old Buzz puts our minds at rest.

So in this "fictional" adventure bluebottle Nat and his two best buddies dream of heading into the wild blue yonder in the "rocket" they have constructed from bits of old junk in the shadow of the launch pad at Cape Canavarel.

Fired up by tales of derring-do by his grandpa (who claimed he saved transatlantic pilot Amelia Earheart by flying up her nose), Nat persuades his pals to stow away in the helmets of the three astronauts.

Unfortunately, after take-off, the little critters are spotted. A sharp-eyed NASA technician clocks them and tells Armstrong there are "contaminants" aboard while, over in Russia, cosmonaut houseflies are hopping made that their Yankee competitors got their first.

Shot in state-of-the-art 3-D, there are some stunning scenes here - particularly the skyscraper-like Apollo moon rocket hurtling into orbit; it'll have you ducking under your seat.

It's also quite beautiful. There's a superbly staged - if not entirely original - space waltz across a weightless cabin to the strains of Strauss's Blue Danube and a particularly imaginative sequence involving globules of gravity-free orange juice escaping from a ration pack.

Worth taking the trip just to gawp at the sheer beauty of the programmer's art.

Tim Evans