The Astronaut Farmer

This "Farmer" Has A Dream
Let's take a quick look at a couple of key elements of the new film "The Astronaut Farmer", starring Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen, Bruce Dern and Tim Blake Nelson.

Charles Farmer (Thornton) and his family live on a farm in a small town called Story, Texas. Farmer has dreamed of traveling into space and now uses the family's large barn to build a spaceship called The Dreamer. He has managed to convince his wife, Audie (Madsen) that he can do this. His son, Shepherd (Max Thierot) helps him build the spaceship and will presumably run mission control. Their two younger daughters are basically the cheering section and provide Farmer with a reason to live the dream.

Okay, so right away, "The Astronaut Farmer" has various telltale signs of a fantasy film or a tall tale. Charles Farmer, a farmer, lives in Story, Texas and builds a spaceship called The Dreamer. Clearly, "The Astronaut Farmer" is not a true story, a story based in reality. It is a fable, a story of...

Barn Burner
A man wearing a spacesuit rides horseback across the sand dunes of a barren desert. He moves right-to-left, which spells trouble in movies' silent language. There, he finds a calf that has strayed from its mother, lying in the sand. With a firm but gentle hand, he returns the lost beast to the herd.

It's a scene whose incongruous visual elements reminded me of the 1968 sci-fi thriller Planet of the Apes. But this isn't some spaceman marooned in a strange place; it's the movie's earthbound hero, a Texan named Charles Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton). A graduate of the University of Texas aerospace engineering program and one-time member of NASA's astronaut program, Charlie left the space agency decades ago to run the family ranch after his father's untimely death. Yet, through all the years of operating the ranch and raising his own family, he hasn't let go of his dream of defying gravity.

In his barn, Charlie works obsessively, day and night, to build a rocket that...

GOOD UPLIFTING FILM BUT, NOT TOTALLY ABSORBING!
I watched this movie this weekend and I expected it to be a little better than it turned out. It's a good movie with fine performances all around. It just didn't pull me in like I wanted it to and it seemed a bit long even though it's only a little over a hour and a half. It's certainly worth watching and it does have an uplifting ending so you may want to rent instead of buying it.

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