Since we've lived through the very beginning of commercialized spaceflight, the notion of an engineer and former astronaut trying to build a working rocket and space vehicle in his barn isn't that difficult to entertain, on one condition. The ATTEMPT makes for a good story, but so long as the film takes itself at all seriously, the man shouldn't be able to actually succeed. The first half of this picture is an interesting film about a man, Farmer, who is putting the finishing touches on a Mercury-Atlas style rocket, complete with capsule and what looks like a surplus Mercury project spacesuit (which he wears positively everywhere that he goes, much like a five-year-old carting around a favorite stuffed-animal). His family believes in him seemingly because it's more fun to entertain his fantasy than it is to rain on his parade, his neighbors are taking bets on whether or not he'll die much less succeed, the government is investigating him ever since he tried to obtain 10,000 gallons of rocket fuel (two awkward FBI agents are inserted for comic relief, and the FAA plays the heavy with threats to shoot him down) but no one except for Farmer himself authentically feels that he'll ever launch. Up to this point, the film is kind of like Fitzcarraldo with a booster rather than a steamship -- you don't believe he'll pull it off, but you keep watching to see just how he'll fail. And, had he actually failed, even if he'd given up after his first fantastic, life and property endangering horizontal launch, the film would have worked as an inspiring story about a genius with a crazy dream who knowingly bites off more than anyone can chew, but keeps right on biting.
Instead, the film changes direction mid-stream and crams so many suspensions of disbelief into such a short time that it looses whatever credibility that it may have spent the first half gaining. How would a man under investigation by the government for building his own rocket be able to obtain another junk booster for his second attempt? How could Farmer completely rebuild his rocket from scratch in such a short time period that his very young girls don't look noticeably older from project start to project finish? How would a barn and a house within walking distance survive the launch of an Atlas booster unscathed? How could a fifteen-year old boy single-handedly man both launch control and mission control for an orbital flight, AND maintain contact with a spacecraft on the far side of the planet without any help from relay stations over yonder? They go on and on. I guess the biggest question is, why did the writers of this film resort to such a cop-out as suddenly endowing their never-succeed-but-never-give-up main character with the Midas touch, when they've spent half of the film laying out all of the reasons that Farmer's dream really wouldn't work? Maybe they figured we'd have so much fun watching the thing go up that we wouldn't ask these questions. Maybe some watchers will.
If you set out to make a fantasy, don't ask us to place it in reality for half the film. If you set out to do a story about a man whose dreams get knocked down again and again, don't suddenly make him inhumanly successful at all he attempts. I liked the first part of this film, but to paraphrase a line from a more famous movie, Flying into space ain't like dusting crops. Depicting it as such takes more suspension of reality than I wanted to give this film.
Instead, the film changes direction mid-stream and crams so many suspensions of disbelief into such a short time that it looses whatever credibility that it may have spent the first half gaining. How would a man under investigation by the government for building his own rocket be able to obtain another junk booster for his second attempt? How could Farmer completely rebuild his rocket from scratch in such a short time period that his very young girls don't look noticeably older from project start to project finish? How would a barn and a house within walking distance survive the launch of an Atlas booster unscathed? How could a fifteen-year old boy single-handedly man both launch control and mission control for an orbital flight, AND maintain contact with a spacecraft on the far side of the planet without any help from relay stations over yonder? They go on and on. I guess the biggest question is, why did the writers of this film resort to such a cop-out as suddenly endowing their never-succeed-but-never-give-up main character with the Midas touch, when they've spent half of the film laying out all of the reasons that Farmer's dream really wouldn't work? Maybe they figured we'd have so much fun watching the thing go up that we wouldn't ask these questions. Maybe some watchers will.
If you set out to make a fantasy, don't ask us to place it in reality for half the film. If you set out to do a story about a man whose dreams get knocked down again and again, don't suddenly make him inhumanly successful at all he attempts. I liked the first part of this film, but to paraphrase a line from a more famous movie, Flying into space ain't like dusting crops. Depicting it as such takes more suspension of reality than I wanted to give this film.