Reviews

I think, perhaps, you have to be in a certain mood to watch and appreciate this film properly. Patient, but alert and attentive to catch the subtleties of the slow-burn plot.

Oh...I should mention it is very Irish. If you don't know what that means, well... watch the film and you'll get a glimmer.

The acting and scenery are marvelous, as others have noted. The plot as a metaphor for the Irish Civil War and so on.

The strange sudden "unfriending" and the bizarre twists and turns it takes as a commentary on human nature and isolation amid a tedious present and an uncertain future.

There's no hand-holding and you have to read between the lines to understand it well. The humor is dry, dark and subtle, sprinkled in by small doses.

I suppose I must have been in the right mood to appreciate it, and largely absent expectations (other than that there would be good acting, which was so).

People expecting more of a comedy will be disappointed, I think, as will those expecting a light-hearted or uplifting conclusion.

Still, I thought it was quite interesting, and certainly different.

It is visually remarkable, beautiful cinematography and effects... yet there is so much to criticize, so much more it could have been.

For one thing, Ad Astra is a pro-space exploration motto, yet the film as a whole is quite anti-space-exploration. The moon city is portrayed as a banal extension of earthly malls for wealthy space tourists, a scientific dead-end where things have gone so wrong there are moon pirates and a largely defunct long-range rocket base.

The Mars colony is portrayed as a dead-end-seeming place of empty concrete corridors and lost potential.

We're alone in the universe and it's all pointless, stay on Earth, the ending seems to say.

Not to mention many technically or scientifically dubious scenes or plot devices, including the main plot device of an antimatter drive vessel near Neptune endangering Earth.

A frequently heard critique is the main character is so emotionless most of the film that he is hard to relate to. Now in some ways I found this refreshing as compared to so many characters in many films who are just irrational bundles of feelings, but even I agree it was maybe too far.

Then there's the finale...oh my gosh. Riding a nuke "wave" back to earth? Somebody doesn't understand how explosions work in a vacuum. And how exactly was Lima able to determine there were no intelligent aliens in the entire universe? FTL comm?

If you love space travel you'll find this rather depressing and negative. At least he got back with Liv Tyler at the end, that's a bright note...