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smartassoperachick · 7 years ago

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Netflix and Freak Out: The Space Between Us

Guess what’s back! That’s right, it’s Netflix and Freak Out - lucky for you, because it’s been about two years and I’m sure you’ve been stumbling blindly through the streaming services, not knowing what to watch. Take heart, your fearless leader has returned!

Today, I bring you The Space Between Us. Unlike some of the other gems covered under NAFO, this one surprised me as I felt the need to cover it; it wasn’t completely ridiculous the entire time - there were moments of adorable poignancy and touchingness (a word? I’ll allow it) - but the parts that WERE ridiculous were juuuuuuust enough to qualify it. And the questions left at the end really sealed the deal.

Movie: here are the credits! Thanks for watching!

Me:

So to start, I knew what this movie was generally about when I popped it into the ol’ Bluray with my Korean foot peel masks on the feet and the jasmine tea fresh brewed for my official-preparing-for-lame-crazy-aunt-who-handmakes-all-her-gifts-at-Christmas GNI. It’s some pre-or-very-recently-post pubescent kid born on Mars in the near future comes to visit some chick he met on the internet who lives on Earth and then there’s scientific complications. I assumed that meant that we were being introduced to a utopian future where we had fully inhabited Mars and people just kinda shuttled back and forth. I was (pleasantly surprised to find, as it turns out) incorrect.

We open on Gary Oldman using his natural accent (yay!) as he addresses an audience at some scientific luncheon. He’s telling us all about how he decided when he was 12 that he wants to live on Mars, because we’ve depleted all of our resources here on Earth and going to Mars, though it seems impossible, would show an amazing amount of courage, which is a completely normal thing for a 12-year-old to reason. Well, surprise everyone, because Gary Oldman figured out a way to make that happen, and it turns out six astronauts are going to Mars tomorrow! to live there for good! Nice job, Gary Oldman! We get to meet the six astronauts - two women and four men, which just seems like an episode of The Bachelor waiting to happen, but we never really deal with that - and the head astronaut, a smokin’ hottie in her 20′s, tells everyone how excited she is to go to Mars. They get on the spaceship, rocket up to the little space station that’s gonna drag ‘em all over to Mars, and Hottie pukes! What’s the deal?! Oh, it’s cuz she’s preggers. Whoopsie. So now there’s all this turmoil, because Gary Oldman and his NASA team can’t figure out what to do. Do they bring the astronauts back and waste all this funding they’d gotten to make this trip and try to start over? Do they just wing it and see how the kid fares when he’s born on Mars? Gary Oldman points out that we don’t know what happens when a fetus develops in zero gravity, and the gravity on Mars is different than Earth, so then he’ll be all developmentally wonky if he grows up there, etc. It’s sounding like the astronauts are coming back, but instead Gary Oldman decides that they can’t risk the mission because one astronaut was “irresponsible” (direct quote, that’ll be important later) with her damn uterus, so let’s just hope the kid is born an alien and it all works out for the best.

Hottie has the kid, everything is hunky dory for literally 14 seconds and then she has this Exorcist-looking seizure and immediately dies, all while Gary Oldman is watching the birth from his car (wtf?). They decide the kid has to stay on Mars, because he’d never make the trip back to earth as an infant, and Gary Oldman volunteers to go to Mars to take care of him, but his NASA team points out he has a brain condition and can’t go. So best wishes to the alien kid, they decide to keep him a huge secret and just pretend he was never born for PR purposes, and that’s the end of that.

Cut to sixteen years later. Alien Baby is a precocious-but-socially-stunted teenager whose only friend is basically R2D2 with C3PO’s personality. Since he’s been raised by scientists, he knows how to mess with things and goes poking around in the system to find records of his mom, and finds a video some dude sent her saying he and some house in California will always be waiting for her. This is Alien Baby’s only clue as to who his dad is. Alien Baby is also FaceTiming with a foster kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Colorado (cuz that’s a thing people do) whose name is Tulsa, because beautiful abandoned teenagers are usually named after places or nouns. Tulsa is an outcast whose foster father is a well-meaning alcoholic who apparently dusts crops for a living (though it’s Tulsa’s responsibility to wake him up and remind him that), and whose reputation at school is that of a “slut”, which we learn when Tulsa is randomly playing a piano in her school’s band room when suddenly a bunch of idiot teenagers chase her off the premises yelling “slut” at her. We never learn why, as Tulsa does not seem to have any interaction with anyone other than Alien Baby, and is generally a fashionably-angsty teenager who can be approached by no one.

Alien Baby decides he’s going to try to get to Earth, and his sort of adopted astronaut mom makes a case to Gary Oldman. He eventually agrees, but Alien Baby has to have surgery to make his bones Earth-worthy, which basically just means injecting his bones with extra bone (...sure.). Once that’s done, he heads to Earth and the scientists all put him in quarantine to make sure he can handle Earth’s atmosphere. Alien Baby is genuinely enchanted with things like the ocean, rain, horses and wind, which, let’s face it, is kind of endearing (oh yeah, I guess they wouldn't have horses on Mars. Look, his little mind is blown!). Gary Oldman is pretty stoked to meet Alien Baby and wants to ask him all kinds of questions about Mars; Alien Baby is a weirdo and makes Gary Oldman uncomfortable and only wants to ask questions about Earth. Alien Baby has come to Earth for exactly two reasons: to meet Tulsa, and to find his dad. Gary Oldman isn’t into it, because what if you can’t breathe or something?! and won’t let him go, so Alien Baby - because he was raised by scientists - turns a bunch of valves on helium tanks sitting in his quarantine room and it repressurizes the whole facility so that the gravity is lighter, like it is on Mars, and then no one can catch him as he sneaks out (...sure.).

Alien Baby hightails it to Colorado and goes directly to Tulsa’s high school, walks up to her and says “oh hi it’s me, we’ve never met in person but have basically been virtually dryhumping for years over the internet, and I came all this way to meet you.” Tulsa promptly slaps him, whines he hasn’t talked to her in a while, and then says she has to go to science class, so he should wait for her. She tells him that he’s taller than she thought he’d be, and he says she’s meaner than he thought she’d be, and that’s the most intelligent observation Alien Baby makes about this dumb chick the entire movie.

After science class, Alien Baby tells Tulsa that she’s going to help him find his dad. They go to her house to get some stuff, but Gary Oldman and Adopted Mom Astronaut have been chasing him, and they try to get him to come with them. Don’t worry, though, Tulsa steals her foster dad’s ancient propeller plane and gets them outta there. She announces that she doesn’t know how to fly it, but ya know, does anyway. That only lasts for a few minutes, they make an awkward landing in which the plane coasts into an old wooden shed and (naturally) blows up in a huge mushroom cloud, which throws Gary Oldman and Mom off the trail for a minute while Tulsa and Ailen Baby take a bunch of crazy carjacking and hitchhiking adventures across the country. Alien Baby is honest with Tulsa to a fault about the fact that he’s from Mars, which Tulsa doesn’t believe, and to communicate that, she randomly stops cars and insists Alien Baby get out, then threatens to beat him up. He, in turn, calls her beautiful (...sure.). Tulsa knows all kinds of internety things and figures out that some Shaman in Arizona must have married Alien Baby’s mom and the dude in the picture, so maybe he can tell them who the dude is.

But first! Let’s stop and Costco and pick up some clothes and sleeping bags. This is a great way to get to know each other, and also, now we have sleeping bags! So the kids stop, build a fire, and have awkward I-don’t-know-how-to-kiss-cuz-I-was-born-on-Mars-but-I’ll-totally-have-no-trouble-finding-your-vagina sex, all while Alien Baby is whispering sweet nothings to Tulsa about how he’s found his penguin while Tulsa stares at him blankly, because she’s never said a genuine and/or nice thing in her life, so why start now.

Now that we’ve boned in our conjoined sleeping bags, we are in love and will act as such the entire rest of the trip. They find the shaman, who looks up the record of them getting married and has a copy of the check she used to pay for the marriage (obvs Hottie paid for it...dad’s even more of a deadbeat). The address on the check matches the Google Maps search of the house in Alien Baby’s photo, so the mystery is solved, let’s go! says Tulsa. Though the house is in California, there is apparently some reason they must stop in Vegas first, which literally blows Alien Baby’s mind, and at that very moment his skeleton remembers it doesn’t understand this environment, he gets a huge nosebleed and starts to die. Tulsa gets him to a hospital, where they’re like, “he’s got an enlarged heart,” so Tulsa cries and says she’ll go find dad and tell stories of this day. Alien Baby’s like, wtf, I’m gonna die anyway, take me with you! So she does, and he looks like an actual corpse for the whole trip, which makes a lot of sense, because 12 hours before he was skipping around and marveling at rain.

They get to dad’s house and find the dude in the picture - BUT GUESS WHAT. Dude is NOT happy to see Alien Baby. Why are you reminding me of Hottie?! he decries, and Tulsa runs up to him and calls him a dick. Just when you start to think this will go on forever, Dad announces that Hottie was his sister, not his wife. Tulsa turns around to relay this information, but Alien Baby has started walking into the ocean because he’s decided it’s time to die. “I didn’t get to choose where I was born,” he says, “but I can choose where I die,” which is a statement that resonates with all of us, as every human baby gets a choice as to where they’re born (...sure.). Just in time, while Tulsa is screaming at Alien Baby’s lifeless body floating in the Pacific, Gary Oldman shows up and drags Alien Baby out of the water. Coming back from the dead, Alien Baby looks up at Gary Oldman, somehow forgets that he’s been yelling at him for the past two hours of our lives to leave him alone, and basically says “oh look, you’re my dad.” Gary Oldman chuckles - it’s totes true, Hottie and I boned and here you are! - but then we all remember that Alien Baby is dying, so they have to get him out of the ocean. They get him into a fancy jet plane, where Gary Oldman and Adopted Astronaut Mom agree that the only way to get Alien Baby well is to get him to zero gravity, so pilot, can you kindly fly us to space? I cannot, says pilot, so Gary Oldman announces he’s gonna do it. Just remember, he says, I have a bran disorder so might die while I’m doing this, so if that happens, just take wheel. Sounds good! they all say, and they go up to space, which wakes up and immediately cures Alien Baby.

You have to go back! says Tulsa, and there are tears, and then for some reason they all go back to Earth (though the fighter jet they’re on is already halfway to Mars), Adopted Astronaut Mom cries because she’s going to miss Alien Baby (...oh, okay, I guess Adopted Astronaut Mom isn’t going back to Mars, where she was the last sixteen years? Sounds good), and Gary Oldman suits up to go (...oh, okay, I guess Gary Oldman flew a jet to space for fifteen minutes so now it’s okay to go to Mars with the brain thing? Sounds good). Alien Baby goes to get on the space shuttle, and Tulsa runs out onto the tarmac (of the SPACE SHUTTLE, which the astronauts are pretty much cool with her doing) and they yell inside jokes at each other right before he takes off.

The final scenes are of Adopted Astronaut Mom going to visit Tulsa and asking her to come live on her newly-bought Colorado ranch with her, where she can train to be an astronaut, and Gary Oldman and Alien Baby laughing into the red dust of Mars as they enjoy their home together.

Mmmkay. I have a few issues - let’s get the obvious out of the way. Ima not even ask questions about the science. I looked up some reviews and there was a lot of scoffing at the holes in the gravity stuff, all the back and forth to Mars and Alien Baby’s medical shit. But I think it’s safe to say that we’re not watching this like a NatGeo documentary, yes? I think the social weirdnesses of this announce that the science is probably the last thing we were really researching here. So I leave that where it lies.

My first issue: Tulsa. W.T.F. with this whiny little bitch. As a particularly difficult both teen and adult, I can verify that this kind of stomping your feet and announcing your intended violence do and in fact should get you nothing but eyerolling from those around you. And it’s obnoxious under normal circumstances, but listen, Denver, Wichita, Salt Lake City, whatever your name is: when your catfish boyfriend shows up from “across the country” and all you can do is slap him and huff and puff about science class, then look generally exasperated at his clothes? You can suck it. The fact that this little waif spent the whole movie narrowing her eyebrows and “oh brother” sighing at every adorable heartfelt thing Alien Baby did, and his response to this was to announce his undying love for her just made me want to punch them both.

Let’s also have a quick word about Gary Oldman. W.T.F. with this pretentious lameass. When you think back on everything that happened with Hottie dying in space and this baby floating around in the abyss once you know that not only is he the kid’s dad, but he KNEW he was the kid’s dad, well...you’re just kind of a prick, man. Let’s cover it all up, let’s kinda weigh the scientific pluses and minuses of what happens when this kid is born in space - OH, and let’s call mom irresponsible! How dare that space-exploring uterus be so careless while I was impregnating her. Tsk tsk. Lucky for him, Alien Baby had an epiphany in the ocean and just woke up cool with the fact that you’re his dad, and had the power to stop all this pain he felt, but didn’t, so let’s go to Mars, Daddy!

Personalities aside, the plot made general sense...until the very end. They’re all floating around in the fighter jet in space, and I’m like, “oh, I get it...Tulsa is a foster kid who no one wants, right? So she can promptly go to Mars and be with Romeo!” But no. Tulsa stays on Earth, and no one seems to suggest that there might be an alternative. Similarly, Adopted Astronaut Mom is all kindsa teary at leaving her adopted Alien Baby...but um, why? She just spent the last two decades on Mars. Why would you even want to stay on Earth, where everyone is always whining about how heavy gravity is?!

And finally, while I said I wouldn’t pick at the science, there were a few things that puzzled me enough to distract me from the movie while I tried to reason them out. So we’re sending six astronauts of disproportionate gender distribution to live on Mars. Are we populating Mars? They say they’re going for four years...so then do they just come back and it was neat to have some people living on Mars for a little while? Or is this a long-term thing? Then once Hottie is preggers, all I could think was: they absolutely did NOT prepare medically for childbirth on this trip. Why are we even considering not turning this car around? Or even - and I hate to bring down the mood - why aren’t we talking about the big A? Why wouldn’t Hottie even consider that, if not for her own sake and the sake of Gary Oldman’s apparent precious budget, for the sake of the kid, who we’ve determined is probably gonna end of up crazy deformed? And then, when Hottie dies, everyone’s like “oh we’ll just raise him here on Mars.” With what?! Just trying to figure out how they were going to feed him, now that Hottie’s breastmilk isn’t around, let alone clothe him completely broke my brain. When I woke up, Alien Baby was Alien Teenager and was having quippy conversations with his robot BFF.

Generally speaking, if you can have a good time watching Alien Baby discover what a dog is, you can have a good time with this movie. If you’re looking for a well-thought-out scifi flick or a romantic dramedy, you might want to go to a Star War. I give this one a 6/10, because I would genuinely like to pay the guy who took Brad Pitt out of every shot of Fight Club to do the same thing with Tulsa in this movie and see if it vastly improves it.

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