Films about space explorations have filled our movie houses for many decades, and although they usually have and interesting premise to work from, some of them are executed with precision, and others, well, they haven't succeeded on many levels. "The Space Between Us" certainly has an intriguing premise, however when finally produced, possessed a script that needed a little help.
In this interplanetary adventure, a space shuttle embarks on the first mission to colonize Mars, only to discover after takeoff that one of the astronauts, Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery) is pregnant. Shortly after landing, she dies from complications while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet--never revealing who the father is. This begins the extraordinary life of Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield)--an inquisitive, highly intelligent boy who reaches the age of 16 having only 14 people in his very unconventional upbringing. While searching for clues about his father, and the home planet he's never known, Gardner begins an online friendship with a street smart girl in Colorado named Tulsa (Britt Robertson). When he finally gets a chance to go to Earth, he's eager to experience all the wonders he could only read about on Mars--from the most simple to the extraordinary. But once his explorations begin, scientists discover that Gardner's organs can't withstand Earth's atmosphere. Eager to find his father, Gardner escapes the team of scientists and joins with Tulsa on a race against time to unravel the mystery of how he came to be, and where he belongs in the universe.
Others to round out the cast are Gary Oldman as Nathaniel Shepherd, Carla Gugino as Kendra Wyndham, BD Wong as Tom Chen, Gil Birmingham as Shaman Neka and Colin Egglesfield as Sarah's brother.
This was effectively directed by Peter Chelsom ("Funny Bones" '95, "The Mighty" '98, "Serendipity" '01, "Shall We Dance" '04, Hector and the Search For Happiness'14) plus other films. All the characters have their own distinct personalities emitting just the right amount of emotion and this is where effective directing comes into play. It was written by veteran writer, Allan Loeb based on a story by Stewart Schill, Richard Barton Lewis and Loeb. As stated prior, even though the idea of this film is amazingly creative, this film simply had enough discrepancies to make it distracting, such as Sarah Elliot must've known about her pregnancy before she left Earth considering when the child was born. And there were a couple of slow places in script as well where the running time could've been cut at least 10 minutes. Loeb is a seasoned writer and with this, I suspect he just had a bad day at the laptop. The best thing about this is the premise: a human born on another planet and cannot survive back on Earth because his body has become too acclimated to the gravity of the other planet. It's something a lot of us has never thought of before. Butterfield gives a credible performance as Gardner as does Robertson as Tulsa.
If this idea for a film intrigues you, I believe you'll have fun with this movie, however if a taught script is more what one is looking for, this might be something that can wait for the DVD. It's a film that allows us to sit back and just escape into.
Out of 4 Stars: 2.5 Rated: PG-13 122mins.
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