As this movie played out, I was mesmerized by the heaps of kids of all ages who were wildly excited to be at Space Camp. Every character - no matter how cool or uncool they are alleged to be - acts as though getting to go to Space Camp is cognate to taking the lottery. As they occur together they all take really small in common, but they all share a trust to go farther into the final frontier than humanity has gone.
And oddly, that thread which stitches them all together is what dates this movie the most.
Fifty years ago, our vision was clearly focused on the skies. The question wasn't whether or not a man would get to the moon, but which man would get there first.and which human it would be. Once we got there, we began dreaming of how much further we could go, specifically wondering how long it would have to bring a commission on Mars. Interestingly, while all of this was happening in actual life, books and films were being created that suggested that by the year 2001 we would be capable to send manned missions to Jupiter.
And yet here we are:
2011.
No Mars, no Jupiter.
Less and less boys and girls who dream of passing into space.
It saddens me to mean that kids like Kevin Donaldson (Tate Donovan) or Kathryn Fairly (Lea Thompson) could have grown into the form of adults that see NASA as a scourge of taxpayers' dollars, or that their children could be hard pressed to make a single crew member on the final space mission. After all, we're talking about astronauts here - people who were formerly spoken almost with the same kind of fear as rock stars. At one time it was the charge of a life to stir an astronaut's hand; now it'd probably be met with a "Hey, cool".
Perhaps that's what makes this film feel "So 80's". Not Kelly Preston's perm, nor the fact that teenagers once had Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton blaring from their car stereos. It's the way it reminds me of a mindset before Challenger killed astronauts on the way up, and Discovery killed more on the way down. It's a film that was made at the end of an era where much of kids dreamed of exploring the universe, instead of the gifted few who render great aptitude for mathematics and science. A big portion of me has to see that as a bit of a bummer.as though an entire generation of kids just gave up.
Hopefully as more time passes I'll be proved wrong. Hopefully we are now only in a lull, rather than at the end of a long slow fade out from trying to drive the limits of what's possible.
If that's to be the event though, I sincerely hope the men and women who hold that possible aren't subjected to this movie. It's terrible, and unbefitting of their love for the galaxy.
...Oh and by the way, this film was terrible.