This is a good and appropriate movie for a family with young children, but dreadfully boring for anyone with some intellectual sophistication to see how passé' the plot and characters are.
The characters are a wishful-thinking bunch. Settled in a down-to-earth ranch out somewhere in Texas, it is a solid marriage where the wife stands by her man, even with all his short-comings. The children are there, and guess what, they are pulled out of public school for a few weeks of "off-school" learning on space aeronautics. They have a dog. They have a gas-guzzling large old pickup truck.
These are the good guys.
The bad guys are employees of the various federal agencies. These are dressed in black, drive black vehicles, and are photographed with the sun in the background so that instead of their faces, we see their shadows. The only good guy in that bunch is an astronaut that hangs around the family holding a bottle of Bud.
Another bad guy is the bank that is foreclosing on the ranch.
Not exactly bad, but not good either, the public school is defined as a place where "what is he going to learn there anyway". So, not much positive on public schooling here.
So, if you want to drive large gas-guzzling vehicles, do not believe in public schools, dislike federal government employees, pawning your ranch to pursue a quixotic mission like launching yourself into space, and have a solid marriage with lots of kids and a dog and no apparent source of income or steady job or whatever and live in a farm remote from the rest of society, then you will like this movie.
All this with the happy feeling-good Hollywood music in the background.
"October Sky" was much better. At least the characters in that movie knew what they were against, and made a real and credible effort and achieved a well-deserved success. In comparison, this movie here was humorous and laughable.
The characters are a wishful-thinking bunch. Settled in a down-to-earth ranch out somewhere in Texas, it is a solid marriage where the wife stands by her man, even with all his short-comings. The children are there, and guess what, they are pulled out of public school for a few weeks of "off-school" learning on space aeronautics. They have a dog. They have a gas-guzzling large old pickup truck.
These are the good guys.
The bad guys are employees of the various federal agencies. These are dressed in black, drive black vehicles, and are photographed with the sun in the background so that instead of their faces, we see their shadows. The only good guy in that bunch is an astronaut that hangs around the family holding a bottle of Bud.
Another bad guy is the bank that is foreclosing on the ranch.
Not exactly bad, but not good either, the public school is defined as a place where "what is he going to learn there anyway". So, not much positive on public schooling here.
So, if you want to drive large gas-guzzling vehicles, do not believe in public schools, dislike federal government employees, pawning your ranch to pursue a quixotic mission like launching yourself into space, and have a solid marriage with lots of kids and a dog and no apparent source of income or steady job or whatever and live in a farm remote from the rest of society, then you will like this movie.
All this with the happy feeling-good Hollywood music in the background.
"October Sky" was much better. At least the characters in that movie knew what they were against, and made a real and credible effort and achieved a well-deserved success. In comparison, this movie here was humorous and laughable.