Reviews

Oh boy, there's a lot to unpack here. Let's lay our cards on the table, shall we? This movie was for me. I loved She's All That and know every line. We thought we were so cool and enlightened in our Williamson bubble of snappy and precocious teen dialogue. She's All That subverted expectations and convention with a no nonsense protagonist, sympathetic villains, a friggin awesome dance number, and our leading lady did NOT win the crown. Yes!

I'm not saying the original is good, I'm just saying it's why I watched this movie, obviously. I put off watching this movie for a while. Look at the user reviews, the ratings, and the people involved, this was going to be a trainwreck, and to be fair, I'm not calling it a 'Little' trainwrech, but it did go off the rails a few times. I relented for a few reasons, morbid curiosity, nostalgia for RLC, and Lillard. I'm also a fan of Buchanan and his really good work in Cobra Kai, admittedly, that's his only work I'm familiar with. But that was it, otherwise, I only tuned in to validate my suspicions.

This movie is bizarre, in the spirit of subverting expectations we went a little beyond gender swaps here in most places, in other places we stuck with it, we moved a couple of aspects around regarding the social economics structure, and have slightly fewer parents that exist in the teen comedy world. The bet is lame and doesn't pivot the action through the first plot point in an organic way, the antagonist is rotten and fails in comparison to an early career Paul friggin Walker!! (may he RIP). I'm sure most of the jarring oddities and forced dialogue was in context to my 1999 comparisons but I tried to watch this movie on it's face, which was just as hard even if it wasn't a a remake.

Mark Waters directed this movie, he also directed Mean Girls...What?! How do you get so dispirit results from someone who obviously has an ear for the teenage voice, is this just about the script? The editing is all over the place and I felt like connecting story elements were deleted. Characters were in different places without transition or context and I was confused about the character's motivations a lot while watching this. We know the script is trash but that doesn't explain the direction, editing, production design, world-building, and continuity issues. At one point Buchanan busted out his greatest karate hits as well...for some reason. Why?! I make a mean banana bread but that doesn't mean it should be put into a scene, especially an important plot point scene that drives the homecoming king portion of the bet (that doesn't have nearly enough weight in this movie as it should BTW).

But I laughed...I laughed at four places in this movie, I kept track. These were not internal chuckles or chortles as if to say, "huh, how amusing". I laughed out loud and couldn't help it. The jokes were all delivered by Buchanan. I know he is still relatively early in his career but I like him. I fear that he will fall into the same trap as Britt Robertson, falling for his own hype. He's not that good but he shines against his costars, which doesn't mean much with projects like this.

This movie had all the same trappings as The Duff but not as good of a central underlying theme, which is inexcusable for an almost shot for shot remake. I found myself wanting to watch The Duff instead of this which is never good for the movie in question.

If you watch this movie for Buchanan, I think he is doing just fine, if you're watching for an updated version of She's All That, just watch the original, even if you're not of that generation it will be what you're after if you're considering watching this trash. RLC's presence in He's All That is not worth it, Lillard cracks one funny joke, after that I felt like he had worn out his cameo welcome, the only constant underlying theme with respect to the entire cast of this movie...tragic.

I'm a space head. I love space. I love the rockets, I love the space business, I love the ideas and the possibilities. I'm usually a sucker for a good near future sci-fi film. Don't care too much for space horror, don't know why that's a thing.

Here's were I'm going with this. I love this move. All of the set pieces, the story elements, the production design, and the script are aimed straight at my heart and I fell for it. Having said that, there is so much wrong with it from the script, to the set pieces, to the characterizations, the acting, story continuity, and how they handle teenagers in general, ugh! There is a huge problem that I can't get away from, and the only reason for the 5 out of 10 stars....real time communication between Mars and Earth. I get why they do it, I'm sure it was a totally conscious choice on the parts of the producers and director, it lends itself to the story that is hard to have without it. But it's completely distracting. I found I was trying to convince myself that they were presenting the real-time communication in an artistic manner staged to resemble real-time when in fact they were communicating with lag. But at one point a main characters on Earth interrupts a main character on Mars. Nope, that's where I just can't. The Martian, Gravity, Ad Astra, they all handle this well and incorporate the lag into the story. I just don't see why The Space Between Us couldn't do the same.

OK, enough of all that. Let's get to the stuff that matters. Asa Butterfield is in rare form. He moves past a stoic and enigmatic boy wonder in Ender's Game and transitions to solid front man. I would say he is the best actor in the film but Gary Oldman is in this picture and I'm not ready to go there yet. Britt Robertson is barely hanging onto her character. Which is unfortunate. She's had a charm I've enjoyed watching over the years. I'm still not ready to call her mediocre career a result of the projects she has chosen or if it is, in fact, just her. Carla Gugina isn't good but she's was one of my childhood crushes, soooo, I don't care.

The Space Between Us is a version of the future that NASA and Boeing fancy. I don't think it will look like that, just in terms of hardware. Right now it's a future that SpaceX and Elon Musk envisions, whether NASA likes it or not. The concept of the movie is good, it's tragic, compelling, draws us not only into the main characters but also the main problem that the movie proposes with children being born on Mars, they can't come home, and what is home to someone who has no parents. This movies explores those ideas well using conventional devices like foster children and unconventional plot mechanisms like Martian effects on human physiology.

The penultimate scene to the end is absurd but I cried anyway, the end is perfect and usually the type of ending I crave. Give me a hint of hope, with a dash of realistic snap back, then bring it home with cinematic pace. Don't let the 5 out of 10 fool you, just watch this movie.

I'm noticing a trend here, Hollywood doesn't think that people will watch a movie unless a Marvel or DC villain is attached to it. Joker could have stood on its own as a socially awkward and psychologically deranged New Yorker navigates the daily streets and life of a city gone mad. Then have Juaquin Phoenix at the helm. How do you go wrong? It doesn't need to be an origin story. Having said that the movie is an excellent execution and holds an amazingly, and surprisingly, level of restraint and pacing. As an audience member you are embarrassed for the main character throughout and feel his awkward interactions with people as he is. This could have been a re-imagining of Taxi driver and it would have been better than the source material. One thing that shouldn't be overstated is that the makers and participants of this movie weren't going for louder, faster, and explosions to make its point. Nor did it succumb to fanboy nonsense and cheap multiverse references. You will sympathize with the character in a cradle of relativity that no one will want to admit to others. We've all done the things the titular character does, we've made faces in the mirror, we've wanted things and people above our station, and we've all imagined scenarios where we were smooth, confident, well liked, and said all the right things.

I'm envious for people who would go into this movie with no knowledge of who Batman is, what The Joker is, who the Waynes are, and what Gotham is. For them this movie would simply be a great movie about a clown with a lot of personal problems, I'd watch that.