Film Review: AD ASTRA

Brad, brooding.

I should be mature enough to resist saying this, but a more appropriate name for the 2019 film Ad Astra would have been Ad Nauseam. It droned on and on for two hours (and three minutes, but who's counting), making the same point over and over again. The trouble is, it was hard to tell what that point was. 

It might have been something about fathers (Tommy Lee Jones)  and sons (Brad Pitt), or it might have been something about pay attention to your wife (Liv Tyler) or she will leave you, or who knows, something else entirely. Among the bad things: 

1. The script, its plot loosely plagiarized from the far superior Apocalypse Now, with the planet Neptune playing Vietnam and astronauts instead of soldiers, was embarrassing. I actually felt sorry for the actors for having to utter such trite dialog.

2. The acting was minimal, or to put it more kindly, low-key. The formerly great spitfire, Tommy Lee Jones, seemed like he was on Quaaludes. Donald Sutherland, one of my all-time favorite actors who died five years after making the film, seemed already dead and embalmed. Pretty-boy Brad Pitt, whose face filled the screen almost every second -- mostly peering through the plastic shield of his space helmet -- showed no emotion whatsoever, unless brooding is an emotion. (Supposedly his character was stoic.) And Liv Tyler spoke perhaps ten words the whole time, and that was on video.

3. The scenes showing "outer space" were stale, showing nothing new or exciting. We've seen far better in past great movies, like Gravity, Apollo 13, The Martian and First Man.

Some good things:

1. The musical score was haunting.

2. The opening credits were pretty and the closing credits were a total gas to watch! They went on forever, almost as long as the movie itself (I'm exaggerating), listing everyone and their mother including the assistant to the assistant caterer, the guy who changed the lightbulbs on the set, and all the drivers of all the people who needed to go somewhere during filming.

All the professional critics loved it, which tells you something.