Astronaut

For a long time, Angus Stewart (Richard Dreyfuss) has dreamed of going into space as an astronaut. But at 75, the retired highway engineer is far from an ideal candidate for such a mission. Worse yet, in light of his advanced age, Angus has now also been shunted off to a retirement home by his family. Just when he seems to be losing all desire to live, a small glimmer of hope arrives. Visionary self-made billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore) is giving away a free ticket on a commercial flight into space via a national contest. Convinced he has no chance of winning anyway, Angus enters the contest under a false claim of his date of birth - and actually makes the final selection. Now he must fight prejudice, his health and his family to win the ticket and fulfill a lifelong dream.

It's never too late to fulfill a dream. Canadian actress Shelagh McLeod knows that, too, having moved into the director's chair at the age of 60 to direct her feature debut, "Astronaut". The story, about a retiree who does everything he can to be allowed to fly into space, is genuinely charming. True, there are some aspects of the plot that are not necessarily believable. Still, the whole thing has its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, McLeod fails to imbue her production with the very charm that is actually inherent in this story. Even with great actors like Richard Dreyfuss or Graham Green, the film simply lacks the necessary wit and the right timing.

Thus, the dramaturgical weaknesses also come more clearly to the fore. Especially towards the end, too thickly applied kitsch rules the action, which in turn leads to the fact that you as a viewer is simply not emotionally carried away. Now this sounds like "Astronaut" would be a bad movie. But that's not really the case. Because the story is just as convincing as the main actor. But the powerless execution unfortunately causes the whole thing to slide into irrelevance, which, given the obvious potential, is almost worse than if the movie were just bad.

"Astronaut" is a movie you want to like. And there are moments every now and then where it succeeds a little. But overall, the drama keeps getting lost in clichés, kitsch and implausible plot twists, culminating in a finale that could have been really nice, but just doesn't work that way. Therefore, the bottom line is a very hesitant "Seeable" only with significant cutbacks.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp