directed by Peter Chelsom
written by Allan Loeb, Peter Chelsom, Richard Barton Lewis, Stewart Schill and Tinker Lindsay
As a kid growing up in the 80s I was repeatedly exposed to two things: 1) movies involving visitors from outer space and 2) teen romance movies. Of course, the 1980s following the runaway success of Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, every other movie that came out for much of the remainder of the decade featured benign visitors from another planet. Notable examples, for me, include Cocoon, Flight of the Navigator, Batteries Not Included, and My Stepmother is an Alien, to name but a few. There weren't quite as many teen romance movies that I saw, but they were part of the pop culture landscape as well. Years before Patrick Dempsey set the small screen on fire as "McDreamy," I saw him as the gangly nerd in one or two teen romance movies. John Cusack was a staple of my youth.
Watching The Space Between Us, a teen romance movie about a boy born on Mars (Asa Butterfield) and the earthbound love of his life (Britt Robertson), I found myself distinctly reminded of both those types of 80s movies, and I have to say, for all the film's flaws, I found myself having a genuinely good time.
The film starts with a crew of astronauts being sent on a mission to colonize Mars, a project that's the brainchild of bazillionaire/philanthropist Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman, looking suspiciously like Richard Branson). The leader of the team (Janet Montgomery) turns out to be pregnant, a fact only discovered while the crew is en route to their destination, and she ends up giving birth on Mars, in their colony dubbed East Texas. The reduced gravity results in her death, while her son, Gardner, survives. Because of the PR nightmare involved in sending a pregnant astronaut into space and having her die, Gardner is kept a secret from the world for 16 years, and raised on Mars by the scientists who colonize East Texas. As a teenager (Butterfield) with irrepressible curiosity, however, he yearns to see the world of his mother's birth, as well as his online (and only) friend, a troubled teenager named Tulsa (Robertson) and the team of scientists who raised him, led by Kendra Wyndham (Carla Gugino) relent. After his skeleton is given carbon fiber reinforcement (don't ask), he rockets off to Earth. His body, which grew up in much lower gravity, almost immediately reacts badly to the new environment, but you can't keep a good teen down, and before long Gardner escapes his quarantine to meet up with Tulsa, whom he recruits for a special mission of his own: to find his father. Unfortunately, with the Earth's gravity constantly wreaking havoc on his body, Gardner is on borrowed time. Still, even borrowed time is enough time to fall in love.
As I write this, this film has received a critical drubbing and has been savaged at the U.S. box office. That said, there's actually a lot to like about this movie, which boasts an impressive cast and really remarkable production value.
Chelsom has an extraordinary eye for beauty, as shown by his brief Mars shots and the shots of Gardner and Tulsa driving cross-country to find his dad which show some truly gorgeous scenery. There's a shot I particularly loved: the two of them are driving en route to Arizona and in the background, the sky is filled with hot-air balloons. Had this movie been better-received, this is one of the shots with which it would have been identified.
Another thing, to my mind, really works is the chemistry between Butterfield, who turns in a truly amiable performance, and Robertson, even though she looks noticeably older than her character's seventeen years. While I could have done without their 80s-ish sex scene, and a lot of their banter kind of fell flat, I did enjoy the back-and-forth between them, and the contrast in their characters, that led them to where everyone knew they were headed. One memorable moment, for me, was one in which Gardner spies Tulsa playing (and singing) a song she composed on an electronic organ in a Costco. There simply weren't enough of these in this film.
And that, ultimately, is the problem. Although the film looks great, its script is littered with so many absurdities and gaffes in simple logic that not even the star-crossed lovers or their supporting thespians Oldman and Gugino can elevate it. The movie asks us to believe that a kid who's never been on Earth, and who is actually infirm, can not only escape quarantine, but then consistently elude the authorities, even with all of the technology at their disposal just by walking and hitching rides. It almost plays out like a running gag throughout the film. Then there's all the pseudo-science about Gardner's terrestrial condition, which makes one wonder why nobody thought this would happen in the first place. It's just a lot of bad writing, which is a shame because the premise was really interesting, and had the film been better constructed the love story, which has shades of Roman Holiday, would have played out a lot better.
I'm ambivalent about recommending this movie to anyone but the most die-hard romantics, but I think it's fair to say that this movie is quite likely to strike a chord with people who remember the young-love stories of the 1980s, which had their fair share of silly scripts.
5.5/10
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