Business-wise, it's a prime example of how too many movies end up dumbed down and degraded for their primary sources of revenue......overseas audiences way more forgiving of crummy movies as long as there's lots of CGI, explosions and sound-bite oneliners in place of real dialogue. Financed by a Chinese outfit, "The Space Between Us" starts by lavishing on the outer space special effects to set up its laborious premise......that of a sweetly innocent teenage boy born and raised on Mars (oh please, please, we beg of you....don't ask us to explain why...). The boy, who's like an adorably hormonal E.T.,has been kept hidden and secret from the prying Earth media by the space program's Sugar Daddy, a combo Steve Jobs/Richard Branson Motivational Squeaker played to the balcony seats by Gary Oldman. But aha.... our plucky Mars-Boy (Asa Butterfield, now seven feet taller than when he starred in 'Hugo') conducts friendly inter-galactic texting with an equally adorable Earth-Cutie (Brit Robertson, at least ten years too old for the role), a brittle but fundamentally warm hearted foster child. Yes, we and the entire universe know the e-mail thing to Mars is not scientifically possible, but trust me.....this film's faulty science is the least of its problems.
Goldman returns Butterfield home and the boy, in the grand tradition of all nerdy teen movie heroes, quickly escapes the ultra high security NASA compound, picks up his Earth-Sweetie, and off they go in search of his mysterious biological father. And finally, after more than half the movie's running time, the story gets down its main agenda, the blossoming love between boy and girl, Rather than cancer, it's the Earth itself that's menacing our young lovers......raised lighter than air on Mars, Butterfield's bones and heart suffer under the heavy pull of Earth's gravity. (Pretty much how we feel when we wake up in the morning....) What's even more gut-wrenching (from our standpoint).....his calamitous health slide happens before he and Robertson can visit all the theme-park hotels during their Las Vegas stopover. (What, no romantic Gondola ride at The Venetian?)
Indifferently directed by Peter Chelsom, the movie dawdles around picturesque road trip montages before it decides to strenuously yank on the audience's heartstrings, begging for unearned tears. Somewhere near the end, the script throws in a plot twist character who might've given the film some poignant, emotional heft, but tosses him aside, never to be seen again. What's worse, the writers are so tone-deaf to the type of story they've created that they foolishly deny their target audience anything close to a satisfying ending. Instead, the movie's final scene, a paltry stab at uplift, plays as if were lifted from an alternate-universe version of the script. Maybe if these guys previewed the movie to a Mall focus group of teens, they would have realized how far off the track they careened.
Houston....we have a problem.....and "The Space Between Us" scrubs its own mission with only 1 lonely star. (*) The movie's designated teen viewers would be much better off with another umpteenth watching of "A Walk To Remember."
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