One-Way Journey: Our Review of ‘Space Oddity’

Posted in Movies, VOD/iTunes/DigitalDownload by - March 31, 2023
One-Way Journey: Our Review of ‘Space Oddity’

Some films stand out for being spectacular, while others stand out for how bad they are. A lot more movies however fall somewhere in-between, which means they get overlooked or forgotten. Actress Kyra Sedgwick’s big screen directorial debut, Space Oddity, unfortunately is the latter, and will quickly fade away without making much of a whimper.

Alex (Kyle Allen, West Side Story) is ready to take the journey of a lifetime after tragedy strikes his family. An upstart company has selected him to be one of the first few colonists on Mars. And he’s more than willing to leave everything behind to be a part of the one-way trip. His family doesn’t know how to handle his decision. They would prefer that he stays on Earth to take over the family flower farm, but Alex doesn’t want to listen to them.  An insurance agent named Daisy (Alexandra Shipp, X-Men: Dark Phoenix) may throw a wrench in his plans though. She lets Alex allow himself to face his past and open his heart, a thing he’s reluctant to do.

Other than some corny dialogue, there really isn’t anything wrong with Space Oddity. Allen and Shipp have decent chemistry, and the supporting characters played by Madeline Brewer, Simon Helberg, Carrie Preston and Kevin Bacon are strong. While some may wonder how Allen’s character could fall for what looks like a scam to anyone with a brain, his logic makes sense. The film also has some good comedic moments, and a few heartwarming ones as well. Space Oddity is a love story at heart, with a dramatic core that would usually draw in a decent audience. The problem is, the film doesn’t do anything unique to help it stand out. It’s a cookie-cutter formula that audiences have seen time and time again.

There are a lot of questions that Space Oddity answers even byt he time it ends. And while the move doesn’t need to answer them, it helps to not ask the questions in the first place. It really didn’t matter if the Mars mission was a scam or not. But they constantly asked if the family needed to consider that possibility. It was added drama the film didn’t need. Instead, they should have just stayed focused on the tragedy, and whether Alex was wanting to go away for the right reason. A lot of the background characters seemed mean spirited as well, which the film could have done without.

In the end Space Oddity isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not a good one either. It’s a film you could sit around on a Sunday afternoon and watch without feeling like you wasted your time, but you won’t feel like you’ve seen anything special either. It’s like a Hallmark movie of the week, and if you like that type of movie you will be fine with it. If you don’t, you will wonder why you hadn’t watched something else.

This post was written by
While Roderick has only been writing movie reviews for a relatively short time, he's been a fan of film for as long as he can remember. It's a love affair that started when he saw Star Wars at a drive-in theatre in Kitchener when he was four years old. In the past decade he's fulfilled his dream of interviewing celebrities, attending red carpets events at festivals such as TIFF and writing reviews for outlets such as Realstylenetwork.com. He's always on the hunt for the next big thing to hit the screen.
Comments are closed.
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-61364310-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');