Director: Liz W. Garcia
Writer: Liz W. Garcia
Stars: Emma Roberts, Tom Hopper, Poppy Liu
Synopsis: Rex, a Florida party girl, turns out to be the only hope for the NASA space program after a fluke puts her in training with other candidates who may have better resumés, but don’t have her smarts, heart, and moxie.
Space Cadet is so tediously artificial and insincere that the rather light-hearted film becomes excruciatingly insufferable. In fact, it’s the type of film made for a “star” like Emma Roberts, and I use those quotation marks to prove a point. Without streaming, would she be able to make movies? Roberts has made some of the worst comedies that tend to lean on the romantic side in recent memory.
Let’s review her filmography. With the jaw-droppingly wrong Madame Web, Little Italy, and Holidate, she has 43 feature films under her belt, but only 11 have a positive Rotten Tomatoes rating. (I would like to add that only 14 of them have an audience approval rating, the highest being 76% for a supporting role in We’re The Millers.). Less than a third of those would be considered Emma Roberts vehicles, and most of those would not be comedies.
This brings me to my point: can we have an intervention so Ms. Roberts can stop starring in comedies like Space Cadet? Unfortunately, with the streaming wars still raging, studios will keep bringing her scripts like Space Cadet from the bottom of the trash heap, which would never have been made if they had been tested in a theatrical release.
Space Cadet follows Tiffany Simpson (Roberts), whom her friends and family affectionately call “Rex.” Ever since she was a little girl, watching the stars with her mom, she has dreamt of going into the great void known as space. Sadly, her mother died, forcing Rex to give up lucrative opportunities to utilize her degree in engineering so she could help out at her father’s bar.
However, even though her mother has passed, Rex still feels that mother-daughter bond that will never go away. She still dreams of working for NASA. Her best friend, Nadine (Poppy Liu), takes matters into her own hands. Nadine embellishes Rex’s application and does such a stellar job that the paper ends up on top of the pile for the government’s uber-competitive astronaut training program.
The program director, Logan (Tom Hopper), is against her, but Pam (Top Five’s Gabrielle Union) feels the legendary space program could use new blood and a fresh perspective. When Rex finds out that her best friend doctored her application, she is in over her head. Still, she relies on her intellect, ability to think on her feet, and an unusual amount of empathy to endear herself to her classmates and administrators.
Liz W. Garcia executive produced, directed, and wrote the script for this Prime Video film. You can hardly be surprised after watching the final results since the same filmmaker did Kristen Bell dirty with The Lifeguard. She is one of the few filmmakers with the talent to bring critics and audiences together when agreeing about movies they both hate.
This is the perfect example of a studio remaking a movie with a different story but generally the same premise. For instance, in this case, the film is Legally Blonde, except that it replaces Harvard’s law program with NASA’s space program. Here, everyone underestimates Roberts’s character, but she proves her worth with an unorthodox approach. Yes, you have many who oppose her, but she slowly wins others over. And yes, there is that romantic attraction to a handsome brainiac.
Yes, it’s that classic story of never judging a book by its cover. Except that this is all accomplished by having a bonehead and utterly implausible plot as if NASA wouldn’t fact-check a resume to begin with. Also, as if having strict rules and standards in a military organization like NASA wouldn’t be necessary? The entire script is a trite example of a romantic comedy that is too shallow and simplistic to be enjoyable, and for the genre, that’s saying something.
Then, to top it off, the movie isn’t funny on any level. Most of the humor is placed on Roberts’s shoulders, which needs to be commercially talented enough to carry a feature-length film without any support or comic relief from supporting characters. Besides the mildly amusing turn, albeit a complete character trope, by Kuhoo Verma (The Big Sick), who plays Violet, the film is virtually free of humor.
Yes, many will find Space Cadet inoffensive. No, I am sure many will embrace its light touch and relaxed vibe, which comes with little to no thought so that viewers can turn their brains off for 90 minutes. However, as Jeffrey DeMunn’s District Attorney in The Shawshank Redemption would admit, this could be understood if not condoned, but considering this genre has such a low standard and Garcia’s movie cannot even meet that low-hanging fruit, you shouldn’t reward a film for wasting your time so blatantly.
After all, that is our most valuable asset.
