AD ASTRA

AD ASTRA otherwise known as “Brad Pitt in Space”, feels as if Pitt looked at his body of work and thought Damon, Clooney, McConaughey and Hanks all have space movies under their belts.  If I’m gonna leave a legacy, I’ve got to get in on the astronaut game and check that off my list; and this is why we have AD ASTRA (the title is Latin for “to the stars”).

The film is set in the near future and centers around the interplanetary and emotional journey of astronaut Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) who has followed in the footsteps of his famous astronaut father Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) who abandon Roy and his mother, when Roy was just a child to go in search of extraterrestrial life.  During the course of his mission, named The Lima Project, NASA lost contact with McBride’s ship and he and his crew were presumed dead for many years.  Until in present day, a series of powerful energy surges begin to endanger not only all life on earth but the stability of the solar system. Scientist begin to wonder if McBride did survive and if it’s the antimatter The Lima Project employed as part of the propulsion system causing the problems.  Who better to go in search of the lost in space Lima Project leader than his own space traveling son, Roy.

Don’t expect “The Martian” or “Gravity” from co-writer and director James Gray (“The Lost City of Z” my pick for worse film of 2016).  He’s really a contemplate your naval kind of filmmaker.  I know there’s something to be commended for not embellishing things for the sake of a Hollywood story, but for me, he goes too far to make his movies dry. “Ad Astra” does deliver a few action-oriented scenes, but it’s understood this is not the intent of the film, and I respect that; and the realistic depictions of moonscapes; along with imagining commercialized public flights to the Moon, complete with a Subway in a food court, no sooner do you step off the space shuttle, it seems mockingly accurate and a great touch. 

But on the whole, the movies is too atmospheric, slow, and un-involving.  Similarly to Damien Chazelle’s “First Man”, but that had Claire Foy to ground it and bring it warmth.  Liv Tyler as Roy’s estranged wife is too much of a shadowy figure to do the same for #AdAstra.

The movie asks the question- What if we are all alone in this Universe? Shouldn’t that make our relationship to each other and our planet all the more precious? “You can look out as far as you want, and we should, but in the end, we can’t really comprehend the infinite, that endless void, and what we have is our interaction with each other and the planet” – James Gray. 

Wonderfully contemplative stuff, but bottom line – Brad Pitt in space, leaves a lot of space, to wish you were in another place.

T&T LAMB Rating 2.5