Review of The Right Stuff (1983) by Tomas T — 19 May 2012

The Right Stuff depicts the early American 1960's space program - better known as the Project Mercury - in epic manner and succeeds well enough in bringing the early space flight times to the big screen.

The film follows seven Astronauts chosen to be the first Americans to reach space and how they became much celebrated national heroes. In parallel the film follows the legendary American test pilot, Chuck Yeager, as he inevitably has to acknowledge that the Space Program taking priority over the old and more convenient aerial flight era. The early space program proved to be highly captivating and refreshingly new subject as this early cold war space race is much less known than the later American Apollo missions to the moon (at least for us Europeans). The film succeeds well in portraying the hazardous nature of the early days of space race with it's constant mission failures and also how mortally dangerous Astronaut's job really is; which essentially is just firing man into space on top of gigantous firework.

The space program side of The Right Stuff is interesting despite the bit annoying tongue on the cheek approach it takes in portraying the astronauts as carefree and larger than life characters. Where the film fumbles the ball is with the script by trying to tell two separate stories in one film. Unavoidably the Chuck Yager's test flight side of the film is left with less focus and turns out to be more of less meaningless in the grand scheme of the film. Thus - in my opinion - the film would have been more coherent and even entertaining had it solely focused on the space program and left out the Chuck Yager's part from the film altogether.

Despite this, The Right Stuff is still worth watching - if for nothing else - for the highly interesting subject and the films epic proportions of covering 15 years of early space race. The film is bit on the slow side and burdened with too much content thanks to Yeager's test pilot affair attached to it; this does not ruin the experience but makes the film lengthier and more burdensome than needed.