What do you get when you combine the Young Adult sick-kids-in-love genre with the Young Adult sci-fi adventure genre? Sprinkled with a couple of even older cliches, and one hammy performance?
You get “The Space Between Us,” it seems. Also two hours of teen-pandering tedium.
The far-fetched script has six astronauts blasting off to Mars for an attempt at colonization. The unknown glitch is that one of them doesn’t yet know she’s pregnant.
A lot of shouting then ensues on Mission Control about whether or not to abort the mission, although there is never even a question about whether or not the woman might want to abort the fetus. In fact we never hear what the woman thinks about this situation at all – she simply has the baby, on Mars, and promptly dies.
Which itself prompts 16 more years of shouting back on Earth, as people wonder what to do with this kid. Finally they decided to bring him
back, even though his Martian birth has left his body incapable of adjusting to Earth’s gravity.
Except once he’s landed, he sets off — with the help of an old internet girlfriend – to find the father he never knew.
This is what I first took away from “The Space Between Us.” It’s definitely more than you need to know. Still, it left me with a few questions.
First, when exactly is this happening? It’d have to be at least 20 years in the future, but everybody drives standard-issue cars and wears off-the-Kmart-rack clothes. There’s little sense of the new. Outside of a few sleek laptops, the flashiest gadget – the boy’s little robot friend – is a “Short Circuit” knockoff with a C-3PO voice.
Second, why exactly is this happening? Who are these people? Why is this boy suddenly so desperate to return to a home he never knew? Why is his internet girlfriend – a smart pretty teen who has her own motorcycle, can pilot a plane and has a great sense of humor – supposedly some kind of total loser, shunned by everyone in her high school?
Third – wait, he has “an internet girlfriend”? The kid is inside an aluminum-foil dome somewhere on Mars and he’s got internet? That connects him in real-time with Earth? I can’t even get my email in the downtown Starbucks. I’m still trying to download that puppies-seeing-snow-for-the-first-time video. And he’s texting away from outer space?
It’s a mystery, but then so is how anyone thought this movie was a good idea. Although it’s prettily photographed and clearly aimed at some sort of crossover “The Fault in Our Stars”/”Allegiant” audience, the medical crisis isn’t very believable, and the science-fiction elements aren’t very exciting. Whenever things get dull, director Peter Chelsom just throws on another pop song.
He has to throw on a lot of them, too, because the cast never moves beyond one-note characterizations. As the girl, Tulsa, Britt Robertson is spunky; as the boy, Gardner, Asa Butterfield is mopey. (Five more friends and they could be the Seven Dwarfs.) As the token adults, Carla Gugino looks concerned, which is understandable, and Gary Oldman shouts a lot, possibly to keep himself awake.
It certainly kept me awake, for which I have to thank him. After all, you know, I have to sit through this stuff.
But you don’t.
Ratings note: The film contains violence and sexual situations.
‘The Space Between Us’ (PG-13) STX Entertainment (121 min.) Directed by Peter Chelsom. With Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Carla Gugino. Now playing in New Jersey. TWO STARS
Stephen Whitty may be reached at stephenjwhitty@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwhitty. Find him on <a
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