Out to launch

>> Self-consciously corny The Astronaut Farmer doesn’t get off the ground

by MARK SLUTSKY

What we have here may be the most self-consciously old-fashioned and straight-up corny motion picture—that isn’t an inspirational sports movie—to come out of Hollywood in years. The Astronaut Farmer is the fourth film from the twin brother filmmaking team Michael and Mark Polish (Twin Falls Idaho, Northfork), and you get the feeling they set out to make the All-American-est movie possible with current cinematic technology. They succeed at that, kind of, but at the same time have ended up with a movie that seems weirdly detached—not quite smirky but somewhere in that neighbourhood.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Charles Farmer (yeah... yeah), a Texas rancher and former pilot who was on his way to becoming a rocket man when his father’s suicide intervened. Now he’s a devoted family man, husband to doting wife Virginia Madsen and dad to a pair of sickeningly cute daughters. Oh, and he’s building a rocket in his barn.

Around town, the Astronaut Farmer is either indulged as a local eccentric, or, weirdly, not known at all. But when word of his plans gets out, he becomes a controversial curiosity on a national scale as the media jumps on the story and the bureaucratic killjoys at the Federal Aviation Administration get all up in his grill for, well, building a rocket in his barn. Soon, our would-be spaceman is running out of money, running out of favours and generally running out of time before the bank forecloses on the family farm.

The Astronaut Farmer is the kind of movie where the very fate of the family farm is at risk, and what more do you really need to know? Thornton is his usual capable self, and the movie’s got a solid supporting cast, including Bruce Willis in an uncredited role. But despite the acting (and the lovely cinematography), something doesn’t quite add up.

Maybe it’s the movie’s overbearing self-consciousness, its plodding pace or its weird plotting (it starts at a confusing point in the story where it’s hard to tell how much the outside world actually knows about Farmer). Or maybe the Polish brothers just ain’t Frank Capra. Whatever the reason, The Astronaut Farmer doesn’t quite get off the ground.

The Astronaut Farmer opens this Friday, Feb. 23

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