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"...I Wov U Daddy...Even Though You're A Complete Nutter And A Bit Of A C**t..."
- The Tosh That (Unfortunately) Is "Ad Astra"
Everything seems to go wrong here. Although Pitt's acting is possibly the strongest he's ever done in this film - his casting in the lead role is a huge misjudgement. Every second on screen, the normally likeable Pittster seems wildly out of place and even about to burst into laughter.
But then it gets worse, character cliché after character cliché flows at you in an array of scenes you’ve seen in so many buddy-buddy space movies. There are feelingless Sergeants, Space.com executives who care even less, the crewmembers who seem clueless, freeze or freak out - every bloody one of them wooden or borrowed. Other silly inclusions include Ruth Negga and Liv Tyler who get to do so little. Donald Sutherland does his "Space Cowboys" schtick and again it just feels wrong.
But what about the set scenes, say you of special-effects heroin-addiction. Sure, many look good. But none of it is in the service of a good story as it jumps from one ludicrous scenario to another. Things crop up as if they were casual events in space – a chatty woman receptionist at the space station entrance area, gabbing on like she’s having her hair done. Best is - Brad swimming under a lake of pitch-black water on Mars (wait for it) in a fully loaded white clunky spacesuit with a helmet on that doesn't leak - just in time to climb out of a steel hatch on the Martian surface, run across the dust and climb (manually) up the side of a rocket counting down in seconds to blast off with six gazillion pounds of trust below you. And he makes it in through the hatch with just two seconds to go, then all three leave their seats to fight him (during launch sequence) and he kills all of them so he can have those deep chats with Daddy-done-a-bunk hovering (as you do) around Neptune these last 30 years. And don't get me started on the monkeys in space (that's right, you heard me) eating astronauts. And then there's an underlying signal thing coming from Neptune that might destroy the world but I'm not sure what happened or how they were generated because when the end of the film came, it isn’t really explained nor did I care.
But these are nothing to the clunky dialogue that simply hammers you with disbelief time and time again. Coming on like a wannabe "Interstellar" or even "2001..." but without any of the good ideas - there is a persistent narrative from Pitt that hankers back to his father (played by Tommy Lee Jones). Deep meaningful passages just come off as dreck, naval-gazing that’s trying to make the film feel like it's saying something. Unfortunately I'm reminded of those now notorious horrible Cannes Film Festival moments when the assembled audience laughed out loud at Bruce Willis in trailer clips of "Armageddon" instead of being awed. At least "Armageddon" turned out to be a hugely entertaining film that didn’t take itself seriously (unfortunately "Ad Astra" does).
And on it goes with a meandering story for what seems like longer than its two hours duration. The only saving grace is some really great special effects along the way. But as good as they are and as you're watching the movie, you still feel like "Ad Astra" is a spoof of the film "Gravity" now renamed "Gravity - The Even Sillier Version". A damn shame really, because I know from the trailer, many were looking forward to seeing this.
Pitt would redeem himself with Tarrantino's weird "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" film (an Oscar for that half-baked cack, give me a break). But "Ad Astra" has to be the kind of film that turkey jokes were invented for and that can't be good in any man's language...
