Saturday, March 03, 2007

The Astronaut Farmer

Last weekend we saw The Astronaut Farmer. The basic premise is an ex-astronaut-contender rancher builds a rocket in his shed and decides to launch himself into space with the help of his loyal and charming family but against the wishes of the government.

The story runs a bit slow at time but is overall a very nice tale and the movie contains nothing particularly objectionable in content aside from seeing people drink beer. Billy Bob Thornton does a very good job deadpanning this role. And the two little girls playing his very young daughters are cute as buttons.

A few thoughts that ran through my mind while watching this movie, aside from the implausibility of this fantasy (but that's okay), were thoughts about how his family worked together. Here was a man who was quite possibly insane and on the verge of destroying his family over an obsession to go into space. Yet his family loved him very much and supported him in his obsession/dream because they believed in him when no one else did.

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