Ad Astra

Last night, for the first time since I don't know when, three out of three films playing at the local movie theater were things I was interested in seeing. Initially, I was inclined to see The Peanut Butter Falcon. As I approached the ticket booth, I was leaning toward Abominable. But in the moment, I chose Ad Astra, a picture I knew nothing about except that the poster shows Brad Pitt wearing a space suit.

Well, it was a beautiful movie. Nevertheless, I didn't care for it. One-sentence synopsis: A man travels 2.7 billion miles to find his absentee father, only to learn that the old man doesn't care to have a relationship with him. Cast: Brad Pitt as an astronaut who, the way the story is structured, almost comes across as the only person in the world; Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones, Liv Tyler and Loren Dean in roles that only occupy the screen for a handful of minutes each. In Jones' case (playing the father), at least half of his time on-screen is depicted as archival footage. Tyler, playing the next most important person in Pitt's character's life, has a duration best measured in seconds to make her impression on the viewer.

Verily, most of the acting in this film is done by Pitt, which is all right (he's improved a lot in that department) except that the way his role is written, he undergoes a 180-degree change in character, which seems very unlikely under any circumstances and, in my opinion, is not earned by the particular circumstances the character undergoes in this movie. In terms of breathtaking majesty or wonder of science fiction conceit, the film is a bit of a let-down: in spite of nice visuals involving Jupiter, Saturn and especially Neptune, the main "too long, didn't read" takeaway is that Jones sacrifices years, lives and relationships to prove that there is intelligent life out there, beyond the solar system ... and inadvertently proves the opposite. We're all alone! No little green men! As for Pitt, he sets out either to rescue or destroy his alienated (ha) parental unit, only to arrive at a significantly less satisfying outcome than both. And finally, the future of space exploration gets a depressing look, with everything revolving (ha) around psychology and managing the optics of a militarized space force, while the moon is crawling with pirates.

I came away depressed, in part because the one-sentence synopsis that I composed in my head during the film really turned all the jazzy sci-fi bits into non-essential window dressing. Shall I stir myself to compose Three Scenes That Made It For Me? Must I? All right, since you insist: (1) The main character fits himself with a feeding tube in zero gravity, making this movie overall the least sexy depiction of shirtless Brad Pitt ever recorded. I daresay that record will stand for a long time. (2) Buggy chase on the moon, with pirates. Best part: the seats on the moon buggies are apparently folding lawn chairs. (3) Space-suited Pitt, clutching a detached bulkhead in front of him, performs the longest standing long jump in human history, survives passing through one of the rings of Neptune (don't try this at home) and somehow, by dead reckoning, doesn't miss the spaceship he's trying to hitch a ride on. Bonus: that ride is fueled primarily by the explosion of an atomic bomb that he left armed on the other spaceship behind him. The thing that amazed me most was that the movie didn't overtly make much out of how nearly impossible that feat of navigation was, of the vast likelihood that he would end up drifting in space forever. It seemed like the sort of thing Brad Pitt's astronaut character (I remember his name; it was Roy McBride) can do any given morning between waking up and having his first cup of coffee.

I'm not saying don't go to see this movie. What I'm saying is, don't worry about taking a prophylactic pee before it starts. If you have to miss a few minutes of Brad Pitt Broods In Space For Two Hours That Feel Like Three, don't sweat it.