One only has to think of Battlefield Earth and After Earth to realise that putting the name of our planet into a movie title isn’t always a good idea.

Happily, Escape From Planet Earth is a reasonable exception, and one that will entertain children while putting half a smile on adult faces, too.

Directed by Cal Brunker (a storyboard artist on Despicable Me), it’s the story of aliens coming to our ‘Dark Planet’ from where nobody has ever returned to the planet Baab.

When Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser) responds to an SOS, he too is trapped here.

The voice cast includes Jessica Alba (Lena Thackleman), Sarah Jessica Parker (Kira Supernova) and Star Trek veteran William Shatner as General Shanker.

Ricky Gervais is too recognisable as the voice of a satirically-intelligent computer, but he amusingly connects Fidel Castro with ZZ Top and explains why he likes Simon ‘Cow-ell’.

Yes, this is an animation trying to be different by featuring real life people while some frames are literally frozen and then re-started.

There is also more detail than the simple look would suggest, while the characters and their flying machines move well.

One can imagine the late Thunderbirds’ creator Gerry Anderson would have been impressed with the style; if only more scenes had the energy of the fun food fight sequence it might had a holiday release.

After years in gestation, the feature was finally released in the US a year ago but it has taken another 12 months to cross the pond.

Despite a good use of bright hues, the Smurf-like blue colour of the aliens’ faces is surprisingly one-dimensional, but at least the eyes and facial expressions have had more work done than usual – particularly during the close-up worried look of our hero at the end.