The Space Between Us Movie Review

The Space Between Us (2017)

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Written by: Allan Loeb (screenplay), Stewart Schill and Richard Barton Lewis & Allan Loeb (story by)
Directed by: Peter Chelsom
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, B.D. Wong
Rating: PG-13

My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it. Read my previous movie reviews!

Plot
The first human born on Mars travels to Earth for the first time, experiencing the wonders of the planet through fresh eyes. He embarks on an adventure with a street smart girl to find his father.

Verdict
Pairing sci-fi and overwrought romance movies, it's got some great set pieces. While sappy, it's not bad, but it wastes a lot of potential.
It depends.

Review 
This has a great hook. In fifteen minutes we get epic space shots, a mission to mars, and a pregnant astronaut that didn't disclose her pregnancy. Unfortunately everything goes downhill after the lean introduction and we jump to the first kid born on Mars.

The production is impressive from concept to execution, and the colony on Mars looked good, but this is a 'cute' movie. An alien is on Earth and everything is new. This does an okay job, but it definitely follows a tried and true pattern not even attempting to rise above the sub-genre. I never thought this was bad, but I just wanted more, more from the story and characters. It never delves into his emotions and experiences. Instead this is content to recycle the same old story with the most obvious of plot points. The screenplay was originally acquired in 1999, but never produced. It was later reworked in 2014.

The movie shares strong parallels with and even references Wings of Desire (1987), which was remade in 1998 as City of Angels with Nicolas Cage. An angel sacrifices immortality for love. What would you give up for love? This isn't a novel question, and we don't even get an attempt at anything new. In essence this is a remake of those two movies, just set in space.
The science is catered to the movie and the pair steal a lot of cars. While I get they are on the run, it's just excessive and makes it difficult to care for a pair of bandits. He's trying to find his father, but we never really care. That plot provides a few twists that you probably guessed towards the beginning of the movie.

The stakes are never very high in this movie, at least it never feels more than overly manipulative. At least it doesn't go fully sappy at the end, but that's not saying much.