The Space Between Us

I missed the celestial convergence of a comet and an eclipse and whatever else it was recently, but I was luckily able to briefly witness the green fireball that lit up the Midwest right around that time (scared the shit outta me as it flared up and made no noise).  All the while, Venus has been just blazing in the night sky like the Rastas’ party won the White House (if only…).  Off to the left, though — admittedly, I don’t know the true direction at any given time, so I’m just gonna stick with “left” and “right” — hung a slightly dimmer planet, Mars.  Sure, distances and light reflections and all sorts of factors contribute to the overall brightness of other planets when they’re visible to us, but something tells me Mars was just somehow Ego-style aware of the film partially set upon him, The Space Between Us.  Trust me, I don’t blame him for his embarrassment…

So, how to begin to explain why this film is just a pile of garbage?  Hrm.  Well, let’s start off with my first impressions of the trailers, which were actually positive.  The story that those trailers seemed to show was that of a boy who was born on Mars and yearned to see Earth.  He eventually got his wish, met up with an Earth girl, and proceeded to see our world with the erstwhile impossible eyes of a human who’d never seen it before.  Sure, it looked kinda saccharine and YA-novel-ish (not meant to be entirely pejorative, but you know what I mean by it), but it still came across as something interesting, if nothing else.

If only that was the film that was delivered.  Nope.  Here’s the REAL story:  A group of astronauts is launched into space to begin preliminary colonization of Mars.  The leader of the group “mysteriously” becomes pregnant mid-way, and she ends up giving birth shortly after touching down on the Red Planet.  Sadly, she dies, and her son (whom they name Gardner because I guess they just hate him (or maybe, in this universe, space-faring scientists have no imagination whatsoever (more on that later))) ends up being raised by the colonists.  Meanwhile on Earth, the corporate overlords of the mission (this isn’t a real NASA mission, but rather a private enterprise undertaken by a Space-X-type o’ business called East Texas (so named so that some dramironic dialogue can be inserted when Gardner’s asked where he’s from)) want to keep the birth a secret, ’cause it could somehow damage the reputation of the company.  I’m still not sure how, but okay.  Flash forward sixteen years, and young Gardner is an angsty teen looking to hit up Earth for a visit.  He is motivated both by the desire to learn about his ancestry, particularly the identity of his father, and the desire to meet up with his online pen-pal, a teenage girl nicknamed Tulsa.

We have no idea how or why the two started chatting online, but they’ve apparently been doing so for some time.  She’s an orphan who’s gone through the foster home ringer, so there’s some common familial ground between them, but we’re given nothing else to work with, just a relationship that exists.  “Don’t worry about it, characterization isn’t really that important,” the script tells us, relying instead on vague and stock motivations for all of the characters, ones that don’t change or evolve all that much from one end of the story to the other.

So Gardner wants to go to Earth, right?  Too bad, sonny-Jim, since you were born in an environment with less gravity and whatnot relative to Earth, your bones are too brittle and your organs (especially your heart…yup, it’s subtle symbolic foreshadowing, and, even yupper, it’s just as nauseating when you see it as you think it’d be) are ill-equipped for the atmosphere shift.  As luck would have it, though, medical science and engineering can implant carbon nanofibers into your bones, and we’re pretty sure the organ thing can be overcome with acclimation and whatnot, so you’re a go!  Yippee!

Once on Earth, Gardner starts to act all gaga over every little thing.  Now, like I said during the trailer impressions, you’d think this would be expected of a nerdy Martian shut-in who’s been wanting to see the Earth his entire life and is now geek-gasming to an extreme degree, but there’s a hitch:  From what we’ve been shown about Gardner while on Mars, he’s not been entirely isolated up there.  Instead, he’s shown to be very smart, curious, dexterous, and slightly cultured, the result of constant interaction with scientists (both American and foreign), engineers, and other highly-skilled and -educated individuals.  He’s also been studying the damn planet for years.  I understand a certain level of awe and wonder to be in order once a dream is achieved, but he loses any and all sense of thought and intelligence when he touches down and never recovers.  He just goes around gazing wondrously at everything, as though it’s the first time he’s ever even conceived of it, often to a point that seems overly absurd.  For instance, after encountering Tulsa at her school (we’ll talk about that bit in a sec, believe you me), he barges in on her class, confidently answers some trivia question the teacher poses, and then, out of nowhere, he becomes enamored with the chemical shower station and pulls the chain, starting the shower, wetting him something good, all to the glee of the rest of the class.  This is not an action that would be undertaken by someone likely very familiar with such safety stations.  Shit like that pops up all the time, leaving us to wonder what the hell is wrong with this otherwise apparently intellectually gifted youngster.

So, back to the plot for a moment.  So East Texas is kinda dragging their feet with regard to letting Gardner loose, what with their myriad tests to make sure he’s safely adjusting to the atmosphere and whatnot, so he busts out to find Tulsa.  He walks right up to her Colorado school and into the halls and fairly quickly spots her and engages her.  Her response?  She slaps him in the face.  ‘Cause it’s been seven months since they’ve chatted.  Yup, no surprise that this dude is just randomly here, no “Hey, I’ve been wanting to meet you in person for so long!”, just a temperamental slap for his lack of recent communication.  Jesus, what I wouldn’t give for a competent screenwriter!

What follows is part chase, part road trip as Tulsa helps Gardner look for his father and simultaneously evade the East Texas folks, led by Gary Oldman.  There’s the requisite bullshit escapes, several instances of grand theft auto, and plenty of empty platitudinous scenes meant to illustrate the glory of life or some shit, and, of course, the two youngsters look to be falling in love (despite Tulsa’s gruff exterior, naturally).  Thing is, this love story is pathetically hollow:  Tulsa knows very little about this guy (like, y’know, his last fucking name or where he’s from, trivial things like that), and Gardner (or the audience, for that matter) never even learns Tulsa’s real name!  Yet their connection is apparently so deep, on a higher plane of energy or something, that they’re just quickly enrapt with each other.  Lord a-mercy!

Everything comes to a head when Gardner’s enlarged heart (remember that whole “your organs ain’t prepared for the atmosphere” thing from before?) becomes an issue and the East Texas folks catch up to the little runaways.  See, the identity of Gardner’s father is the main issue, and the people pursuing him know this information and are for some reason withholding it.  Why?  So the dramatic reveal can happen:  Gary Oldman’s the father!  Hey, Gary?  Quick question, mate, big fan:  WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU JUST TELL HIM THAT FROM THE START?  YOU COULD HAVE EASILY AVOIDED ALL OF THIS BULLSHIT AND PREVENTED US FROM EXPERIENCING A HOLLOW AND POORLY-WRITTEN PLOT!!

Seriously, everything could have been avoided and all would have been well if that little tidbit had been made known from the start (or at any point during the chase, really).  Goddammit!

Honestly, the acting isn’t too bad throughout, with Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Gary Oldman, and Carlo Gugino doing their best with the absolutely trash script.  (Fun side note:  B.D. Wong appears as an ethics-minded scientist here, something slightly ironic given his previous experience in the field as head geneticist in Jurassic Park and Jurassic World.)  The script comes courtesy of Just Go with It scribe Allen Loeb, who recently plagued the world with his poisonous script for Collateral Beauty, so you have some idea of just how bad things get.  I had initially thought that this was based on some random YA novel, and I wanted to get my hands on it to see if the source material could be anywhere near as bad as the adaptation, but I was wrong: this is an original script.  Thanks to the weakness of Loeb, a rare original concept is laden with lazy cliches, uneven characterization, poor dialogue, and a pervasive feeling of derivative-ness.

Bottom line:  Don’t melt your brain with this unless you’re a huge fan of the actors involved (as I am with Oldman).  It’s pretty terrible, and there’s plenty of similar stories out there that had the good fortune of being penned by competent writers.