3.5 stars out of 5
On the line to buy movie tickets, I asked the woman behind me what she was seeing. “Downton Abbey. You?” Brad Pitt in space, I told her. I got up to the register and, from outside Theater 2, my friend Meghan called out to me. What a nice surprise! I asked what she was seeing. “Downton Abbey. You too?” No, I replied, Brad Pitt in space. I turned to face the clerk and when she inquired if I wanted a ticket to Downton Abbey I answered “No!” perhaps a little too vigorously.
Because I was there to see Brad Pitt in space. I was still on a Once Upon a Time high and was looking forward to this. The movie starts and it feels incredibly realistic — but of course we’re not astronauts so how the hell would we know, and also the film is set a little bit in the future and we are not in the future, we are in the now. Regardless, it feels like We Are There — immersive! — and it seems like a recognizable future, anyway, what with DHL and Subway in the Moon Airport.
Brad is an astronaut at the cost of everything else in his life, represented by Liv Tyler is hazy flashbacks. Hey wasn’t she in that space movie Armageddon; I didn’t see it. Brad’s dad (Dad Astra? Brad Astra?) is Tommy Lee Jones, legendary astronaut long presumed dead in the far reaches of the solar system. But recently there have been mystery intergalactic power surges monkeying with people’s Hulu streaming and stuff even worse, and maybe Tommy Lee Jones is alive and has something to do with this. So they call in Brad to talk him off the ledge. Space Force!
At this point I must mention that Tommy Lee Jones looks super old. You know when they try to make an actor look young in old photos but they still look old — you is old. His astrobuddy Donald Sutherland shows up and he ain’t no spring chicken neither. Haha, they were in Space Cowboys together, I didn’t see that one either but I was at a theater on 42nd Street and my friend Zoë was seeing it with her dad, in from the the left coast.
Anyhoo. This is Brad Pitt’s show. Brad Pitt in space. And he is pretty great in the role. He is focused. He is reserved. But that’s his sweet daddy on Neptune and it is dredging up all sorts of memories and feelings, and believe you me, not all of them are on the positive side of the ledger. Brad skillfully conveys all that. Conflicted, he is.
So what we have the makings of is one of those slow, thoughtful, tone-poem space movies that I like so much. Except I guess the filmmakers didn’t trust us or our attention spans enough, so they toss in some, uh, action sequences that didn’t really seem to fit. Plus the dad stuff is a wee bit heavy-handed so maybe a better writer could’ve smoothed that out. Uggh, fathers and sons, complicated stuff, am I right, waddayagonnado? The cat’s in the cradle and child is father to the man.
Ultimately Ad Astra is too long (I know, I know, it takes a loooong time to travel through space) and not fantastic, but it’s pretty good, the various space stuff, and Pitt’s performance, so if you like this kind of thing go see it. If not, there’s always Downton Abbey.
Jack Silbert, curator