No stars (turkey). Rated PG-13, for violence, brief dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.20.19
Put the ballots away; the contest for 2019’s worst big-budget Hollywood production has concluded.
Doesn’t matter what emerges between now and Dec. 31; nothing will be poorer than Ad Astra.
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| Having reached the Mars outpost, Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is warned by Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), superintendent of the American sector, that his military superiors have been less than candid with him. |
This portentous, deadly dull and hopelessly self-indulgent train wreck is the most outrageously overblown sci-fi misfire since 2000’s Battlefield Earth. And that’s woeful company to keep.
Ad Astra is what happens when directors get too full of themselves. History is littered with similar studio miscalculations: Michael Cimino, and Heaven’s Gate; Steven Spielberg, and 1941; Warren Beatty, and Ishtar; Barry Levinson, and Toys. Mega-budget stinkers, every one of them.
James Gray — who co-scripted with Ethan Gross — and star/co-producer Brad Pitt have topped them all.
As I’ve observed before, when science-fiction goes bad, it goes very bad.
Rarely have 122 minutes passed with such agonizing sluggishness. This is the film for folks who thought 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t slow enough.
It’s also the film to watch, for those who can’t get enough of Pitt. You’ll never again see so many tight close-ups and relentlessly slow takes on his face; cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema lingers on every dimple, blemish and wrinkle with the adoration of a reverential acolyte.
Nor is it a happy face. Ever. Pitt spends the entire film in mostly silent remorse and (supposedly) thoughtful brooding. His line deliveries are quiet, flat and emotionless: completely in contrast to his character’s hilariously overblown off-camera narration, where each sentence is separated by pauses so pregnant they could deliver. You’d think Gray and Gross believed their text had been lifted from Moses’ stone tablets.
I despise preachy, pompous science fiction. It’s the first refuge of so-called storytellers who believe that a futuristic setting is the only way they can impart Wisdom Relevant To Our Contemporary Lives. The result is invariably condescending and insufferably patronizing.
Beyond all that — aside from the relentless pomposity — Gray and Gross fail on the most primary level: They don’t tell a good story. The journey isn’t interesting, and the “resolution” leaves far too many key questions and issues unresolved … after which, we get a bewildering epilog that feels as though it has been yanked in from some other film.
