Space Chimps comes from the folks who brought you the universally despised animated film Happily N'Ever After (2006), and although I didn't see the earlier film, I'm told Space Chimps represents something of an improvement. Regardless, everything here has a kind of mechanical sheen rather than organic textures, and it feels like something closer to Tron than a cartoon about monkeys. Then comes the story: Ham (voiced by Andy Samberg) is the grandson of a famous chimp astronaut, who actually went into space. The younger Ham works at the circus, getting himself shot out of cannons. In the film's opening scene, he rockets toward the moon and reaches out for it, disappointed when gravity's pull inevitably begins dragging him back toward Earth.

Like Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, you goofed around with your best friends in grade school; perhaps, like them, you even extended that goofball camaraderie into high school and university and beyond, as they did. It is, however, fairly certain that you and your friends -- unlike them -- did not parlay that lifelong tradition of laughter into a series of virally infectious internet shorts (released under the banner "The Lonely Island") that earned you jobs at a cultural-institution sketch comedy show and then into the star, director and co-star roles in a major-studio motion picture. But, sitting around a gleaming table at a San Francisco four-star hotel, Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone still give the impression they're goofing off and trying to make each other laugh instead of promoting a major motion picture -- and that easy sense of friends-and-fun is up on the screen in Hot Rod. Samberg stars as would-be stuntman Rod Kimble; Schaffer took the director's chair; Taccone plays Rod's younger stepbrother (and videographer) Kevin. The threesome spoke about stuntwork, getting beaten up by your idols, the unavailable-on-DVD '80s epic Rad -- and much more; Cinematical's questions are indicated.

Cinematical: Let's start by talking about those Saturday Night Live digital shorts -- what did you learn from those that you were able to apply to Hot Rod, and what working habits did you have from those that were no help whatsoever making Hot Rod?

Akiva Schaffer: Well, the first part's easier to answer than the second part ...

Andy Samberg: Oh, the second part's easier ...

Akiva Schaffer: Well, I'll take the first part and you take the second! This is gonna work out great! ... And what you just saw happen pretty much answers the first part, which is that -- and it kind of goes before even the shorts, (even the pre-SNL shorts), since we decided to move to Tinseltown , as we call it, and tried to make it. ...

Andy Samberg: We do NOT call it Tinseltown!

Akiva Schaffer: We do ...

Jorma Taccone: I just found out recently it's called 'Los Angeles.'

Andy Samberg: He would give the DMV his address and say 'Tinseltown, USA."

Akiva Schaffer: But, doing all those shorts, I was amazed how much on the set of a movie, once you realize what the 200 people around you are actually doing, and you know their names and you're not as intimidated by the buzzing around of the 200 people -- the wardrobe people are just worrying about wardrobe, the lighting people are just worrying about lights -- how much it would actually boil right back down to the three of us and a couple of friends. Once everything got quiet and it was time to actually shoot, there was really, actually, kind of no difference between doing a short and doing this thing in terms of (how) you're just trying to make the little scenes work. It gets very small right after it gets very big.

Don't you hate road-rage drivers? Well, look on the bright side -- at least when you're driving down the highway towards the video store, you don't have to contend with Bonecrusher going on a mad rampage in the next lane over. The above pic is the first of fourteen that Paramount Pictures has released to us, as their Summer 2007 Preview. There are more images from Michael Bay's Transformers, as well as a handful of pics from Shrek the Third, the Sienna Miller fairy tale Stardust, and the Andy Samberg action-comedy Hot Rod. Oddly, despite the blockbuster punching-power of Transformers and Shrek the Third, the one I'm looking forward to most is Stardust, by far. I don't know much about it, except that it has Sienna Miller and it's got some hippy-dippy Princess Bride kind of vibe, and the first trailer popped up on some Russian website a few weeks ago. That's enough for me! After the pics, check out Paramount's press notes for each film.