Furry rodents on a mission to save the world

Given its premise - guinea pig secret agents save the world - you might think this latest Walt Disney offers little more than cuteness. But, combining an entertaining plot with Disney's first mixed live-action/animation venture into 3D, this Jerry Bruckheimer production has slightly more to offer than you might imagine.

In G-Force, the FBI is training animals as special agents. The key team - a team of guinea pigs - uncovers a plot to take over the world by a billionaire home-appliances manufacturer. But all is nearly lost when the team is disbanded and the guinea pigs are assigned as experimental animals.

What follows is an escape and plenty of high-jinx as the furry secret agents scuttle past a host of obstacles that stand between them and their mission to save the world.

G-Force sees two-time Oscar-winning visual effects master Hoyt Yeatman at the helm. Yeatman and Bruckheimer have teamed up before in Armageddon, Kangaroo Jack and the box-office smash hit The Rock.

'To dimensionalise a mixture of live action and animation is a big deal,' says Yeatman. 'I think we're breaking new ground in that respect - 3D adds another layer; it's almost like going from black and white to colour, from silent to sound.'

Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage, who provides voiceover for a mole computer specialist called Speckles and is in his sixth collaboration with Bruckheimer, says: 'When I saw Speckles, something about it got to me ... It was important to me to create a new voice that was unrecognisable from my own vocal patterns. It was also important to me to go into an area that had a kind of a zany intensity.'