Review of Ad Astra (2019) by Jwcritic123 — 22 Sep 2019

This review contains spoilers, but really, is it possible to spoil dreck? What I find even more offensive than the existence of this God-awful, pretentiously-titled, horribly contrived, and plodding movie is the fact that prominent film critics are pretending to adore it.

It’s as if a child with muddy sneakers walked around on a blank canvas and the experts proclaimed “Brilliant!”, “Marvelous!”, “A Master Work!”. Even the highly over-rated and ludicrous Gravity had a single redeeming feature: it was truly visually stunning.

In contrast, many of the effects in Ad Astra are almost Buck Rogers amateurish, while at best the film breaks zero new ground in the CGI department. It’s rare that I watch a big budget feature movie and can’t find ANYTHING to praise.

Plot, nope. The number of plot holes and suspension-of-beliefisms are far too numerous to track. The laws of physics be damned, your average Marvel comics flick is more scientifically plausible. Objects and astronauts hurtle toward each other at breakneck speeds only to magically slow down at the last second and thus avoid catastrophe.

Buildings and ships in the vacuum of space have no apparent airlocks or failsafe devices, and all docking systems are universal no matter their age or origin. Let’s not even bother to place Brad in suspended animation as he travels to the outskirts of the solar system in a few weeks when a simple nap will do.

Crazed carnivorous giant baboons as experimental space station test subjects, sure why not, what could possibly go wrong? Anonymous fearless moon pirates who attack 60’s-era government rovers for absolutely no evident reason, and cannot be successfully defended against even when said assaults are totally anticipated, go for it.

And how about designing a manned exploratory mission in which the research vessel happens to contain a cosmic ray gadget that can somehow be programmed to obliterate the entire universe by a heroically unstable rogue commander (coincidentally, Brad Pitt’s erstwhile absentee daddy Tommy Lee Jones who grows a beard during a 29 year span but otherwise fails to age).

Sets, nope. Imagine the human colonizers of Mars having the foresight to create an outlandishly textured giant room for the seemingly sole purpose of having Brad Pitt speak plaintively into a microphone while they monitor him from behind an incongruously low-tech metal grate.

Character development, nope. Most of the participants barely attain two-dimensional status. The talents of actors such as Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, and Natasha Lyonne are totally squandered in roles too insubstantial to be even considered cameos.

This is Brad’s biggest acting debacle since the dismal World War Z, and there’s not much to be said about poor Tommy Lee in this movie other than he must have needed the paycheck. Dialogue, God no! Stilted boring droning Pitt-narrations, and unrealistic sappy prose designed to jerk a tear from every duct (me and my family: frequent eye rolling and occasional incredulous hiccups of laughter).

Pace, holy crap! Undoubtedly the worst aspect of this movie is that it is beyond glacially slow. However, unlike other overly long space epics, such as its slightly tedious venerable predecessor Silent Running, Ad Astra is definitely not worth the mind-numbing two hours and three very long minutes voyage.