A plot that’s out of this world
‘The Space Between Us’ offers a beautifully told yet improbable tale
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Department of Preposterous Plots is chock-full o’ nutty setups, especially in the interstellar adventure realm, but “The Space Between Us” speeds us to new heights of implausibility from the get-go — no Giant Eagle Advantage card required.
It opens with the liftoff of a space shuttle embarking on NASA’s first mission to colonize Mars. “Mankind can make a fresh start there,” intones project chief Gary Oldman, only to discover — two months into the team’s voyage — that womankind has complicated things: Astronaut Sarah Elliot is pregnant.
No time for Lamaze (she won’t reveal the father’s name, anyway). But the resourceful Mars staff fashions a fast-track maternity ward and gives somebody an OB-GYN crash course. Immediately upon landing, Sarah goes into labor and successfully births a bouncing baby boy — but then, less successfully, she dies from complications.
Chief Oldman, now faced with a tough decision, makes the obvious choice: Cover up the birth and the boy’s existence — “or we lose our financing!” All that, in the first 10 or 15 minutes. Cut to 16 years later and the bubble complex where Gardner (Asa Butterfield) — first human born on the Red Planet — has been raised by surrogate mom Kendra (Carla Gugino) and a rotat-ing team of scientists. He’s remarkably normal, for all that — and for the fact that he’s only met 14 people thus far in his entire life. Highly intelligent and inquisitive, he’s been searching for clues about his father and his home planet — where else but online? — and has an ongoing chat-session friendship with a rebellious girl named Tulsa in Colorado, as opposed to a girl named Colorado in Tulsa.
Desperate to experience Earth’s wonders and find his father, Gardner hops the shuttle back to Earth, escapes his handlers and links up with Tulsa for high school high jinks that go well enough until his organs have a problem with Earth’s atmosphere.
Well, not all his organs. Some of them work just fine, with Tulsa.
“But his heart can’t handle our gravity,” say the scientists.
And his brain can’t handle our levity.
Director Peter Chelsom has made some very interesting films (“Hear My
Song,” “Funny Bones,” “The Mighty,” “Shall We Dance”) but did himself no favor in teaming up with screenwriter Allan Loeb (“Collateral Beauty”) for this one. The story gets increasingly wacko as it goes along, with our naive hero and heroine outpacing all the intergalactic agents and agencies on their heels. It makes Matt Damon’s “The Martian” look like cinema verite by comparison.
On the positive side, there’s wonderful Asa Butterfield with his wonderful face and wonderfully striking blue eyes. He was terrific as a kid in the title roles of “Hugo” (2011) and “Ender’s Game” (2013). His great reaction to the sight of his first horse is matched by his awkward earthly walk and charming naivete.
“You’re taller than I thought you’d be,” says Britt Robertson as Tulsa.
“You’re meaner than I thought you’d be,” Gardner replies.
Mr. Butterfield, at 19, is the living, breathing definition of male cute.
Ms. Robertson, at 27, is the long-in-the-tooth definition of female obnoxious.
“The Space Between Us” is a joint venture between STX Entertainment and China’s Hony Capital — the first major investment by a Chinese company in a major Hollywood production, seeking to tap into world’s fastest-growing movie market — China’s.
This film is teen fare aimed at “young adults” and released (after several postponements) in the “dump months” of January and February. The tech stuff in it is pretty good. The earthscapes are pretty beautiful. The nighttime love scene by the light of a campfire is pretty romantic. Asa Butterfield’s eyes are pretty astonishing, no matter how many times you see them.
It’s all very pretty. And pretty absurd.