• Home
• About

The Astronaut Farmer

There was so much to like about this movie, parts that succeeded, and yet other parts were muddled and frustrating…and I’m still trying to figure out how I can sum up my feeling, how I would rate it on a scale of 1-10.

• Premise

Though I loved the idea of following your dream and Farmer being an inspiration to his kids, I couldn’t overcome the fact (regardless of what the wife said) that his particular dream was so dangerous that it made him foolish to risk his family suffering from his loss. Other movies tackled this theme, but the dream was never life-threatening- Pursuit of Happyness, Gattacca, Rudy, Rocky, etc.

I feel it would’ve been more dramatic and noble had Farmer given up the mission because of its risk. And a tinkering of the rest of the story- he and his son, who was earlier against the idea for this reason and was turned off by science and space, reconciled and the son grew up to be a real astronaut.

• Structure/Plot, Character

The two main FBI agents were caricatures (and not even funny) and that felt out of place with the rest of the movie’s tone.

Farmer’s father-in-law. He had a great line near the middle of the story, how he was proud Farmer not only got his family to eat together, but to dream together. This dialogue would’ve had more impact at the end of Act 2, between the two rocket launches. I didn’t see any point to the father-in-law dying earlier.

• Logic, Little things

A montage spreading word of Farmer’s quest has one bit in Times Square with audio from the giant Coke screen. I’m sure even people who are familiar with that screen solely from other movies and TV shows know that it doesn’t have sound.

The FAA, FBI and others held a hearing for Farmer’s request…in his town. Yeah, right. And the CIA was there. You know a movie is lazy or going for false drama whenever the CIA shows up for something that’s clearly out of their jurisdiction.

I accepted that Farmer built the first rocket by himself and over the years. But building the second rocket so quickly went out of bounds of believability.

After the first rocket went off-course and it seemed to everyone that the dream was over, why did the FBI agents continue spying on Farmer? And then how did they not see the construction of the new rocket?

Subscribe to the RSS feed and follow the conversation.