Movie Review: 'The Space Between Us'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Well, it's certainly an aptly titled movie.
The Space Between Us, that is, which tries to cram in so much plot and so many genres that there's empty space where continuity, connective tissue, and answers to questions ought to be.
The first human born on Mars gets the chance to travel to Earth for the first time, hoping for experiences on that other planet that he has thus far been denied.
That's the ambitious agenda of The Space Between Us, an adventure drama set in the near future that is ultimately an interplanetary teen love story as well as a half-hearted mystery and a science fiction thriller.
Asa Butterfield, who made such a strong impression in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Hugo, and Ender's Game, stars as Gardner Elliot, whose mother is an astronaut stationed on Mars—one of six living there -- who arrived there to help colonize the Red Planet as part of a four-year mission.
But she discovers that she is pregnant, doesn't reveal who the father is, and then dies tragically during childbirth.
Much later, when Gardner turns 16, having been raised by scientists, including Carla Gugino -- and still largely unschooled in human interaction, given that he's only met 14 people, some of whom have followed the astronauts to Mars -- he gets the chance to visit Earth.
He hopes to make several connections there: to meet the founder of the mission, Nathaniel Gardner, played by Gary Oldman; to track down the father he never knew; to be accompanied by an Earth girl he has met online, played by Britt Robertson, who has lived in a succession of foster homes and whom Gardner wants very badly to meet in person; to finally find out just how he came to be on the home planet he's never known; and to more or less discover just where he fits in in the universe.
And he does indeed arrive on Earth and meet Tulsa.
But he soon discovers that his organs cannot abide earth's atmosphere: gravity is not only making him sick but threatening his life.
So Gardner and Elliot don't have much time.
Director Peter Chelsom (Hear My Song, Funny Bones, The Mighty, Town & Country, Serendipity, Shall We Dance) juggles all the elements in such a sketchy way that it sometimes seems that reels of exposition are missing.
The screenplay by Allan Loeb, based on a story by Loeb, Stewart Schill, and Richard Barton Lewis, explores separation and isolation, but doesn't allow us enough time with the important characters to really know them and care about their welfare.
Unlike the Matt Damon starrer, The Martian, we never get to the point that we're up there as participants with the protagonist, rather than observers being told what is actually going on.
So we'll travel to 2 stars out of 4 for The Space Between Us, a middling science-fictional romance that doesn't do much with its out-of-this-world premise.
