Review of The Right Stuff (1983) by Cameron J — 01 Jun 2012

"I need the right stuff, baby, this evenin'!" I'm sorry, but I just had to do that, just like when I reviewed "Moon", an astronaut film starring Sam Rockwell and directed by David Bowie's son, I practically had no other choice than to say, "Ground control to Major Sam" and how when I eventually review "Armageddon", a very stupidly rock and roll moon film, I'm going to try and crowbar in "Armageddon It". Shockingly, it appear as though the Moon is a very musical place, or at least it should be, because I'd imagine being on is boring without some tunes. Yeah, being trapped billions of miles from civilization, on a giant rock in the black vacuum of space, which can explosively decompress your lungs if just one thing messes up in either your helmet or suit; it doesn't get any more boring that insufferable claustrophobia. This film is right, if you're going to do something as insanely dangerous as that for the sake of science, then man, you need "the right stuff"... baby, this evening. Seriously though, it would appear as though "Philip" Kaufman is the real "man on the moon", and I must say, sorry Andy, but I like it that way, because the boy seems to have the right stuff to take on a project like this. Now, whether or not he has the right stuff to make these three hours go on without getting to be too much after a while, well, I'm going to have to say not so much.

The film suffers a tad from an ever so occasional uneven focus, paying too much attention on one subplot, only to rather jarringly slip into another out of nowhere. These jarring transition isn't helped by the fact that the over focus is supplemented considerably through padding, either by repetition or, most of all, excess, superfluous material. There's not much epic sweep to this sprawling film, though there is much filler and over exposition as we witness the hardly abriged and surprisingly hardly layered progress in this very talk-driven central mission, with a fair couple of cliches within the story making the progression more bumpy. Still, at the end of the day, the central problem with the film is that it is just so very slow. It's not nearly tedious; in fact, the film is rarely all that dull, yet the film remains rather sluggish in its very steady progression, and that alone makes the film rather underwhelming, let alone when it goes plagued by an uneven tone, losing oomph and gaining it back in such inorganic fashions that, after a while, not even the more oomphy parts hit all that hard. Much like some of the test rockets, this film launches strong, only to slow down considerably until it finds itself running the risk of becoming an unrewarding venture, yet where those rockets sputtered and wrecked, this film carries on, never quite living up to the promises made by the strong beginning and concept, yet still carrying enough of its own right stuff to carry on and hit considerably more than miss.

It would appear as though, for a while, if you wanted your film to look reasonably handsome for the most part, with a few show-stopper shots of beauty, then Caleb Deschanel was a go-to guy, for although the cinematography, on the whole, is not terrible stunner, it's consistently handsome, with a couple of shots that really stop you cold. Still, it's not just the look of the film that engages, as the feel for the film is also an engrossing one. Sure, the film rarely punches on an emotional level, yet it is with relentless charm, powering this film during its slower, less eventful moments, while still leaving room to not drown out the fascinating intrigue of factuality. However, when depth does come into play, Philip Kaufman truly accels in a kind of meditative grace that really drives home and enthralls with dramatic depth and intrigue that really extracts the humanity and heroism of this story in an engrossing fashion. Sadly, these glowing moments remain underused, yet the film still always has that charm to run back, and does so with the help of quite the colorful cast that really does have the right stuff to carry this picture. Sure, dramatic material for the performers are, much like the dramatic material within the film, few and far between in presence, yet when they do come into play, our cast of sharp talents predictably provide a humanly strong presence, if not a degree of emotional range. Still, where those impacting moments of excellent acting hit the scene on occasion, charisma is constant among the cast, with each person delivering a colorful and distinctive performance that, when married in atmosphere with the others, create remarkable chemistry that defines the film's defining humanity and leaves the film consistently resonant, as well as stylish and fascinating.

In the end, the film hits its cliches and lapses in tone and, ever so occasionally, focus, with padding and over exposition to make worse the slowness which, in it of itself, serves supplementary to the film's ultimate misstep of underwhelmingness throughout long periods of time, yet where the film could fallen as simply that, underwhelming, handsome style that, at times, serves supplementary to the sobering atmosphere that creates the occasional, yet worth waiting for piece of sharp emotional resonance to break up consistent charm, complimented by a slew of charismatic and, at times, emotional performances, thus leaving "The Right Stuff" to land smoothly as a fascinating, charming and sometimes emotionally rewarding study on the early days of the pilots of space.

3/5 - Good.