The Astronaut Farmer (Warner Bros.) is a sweet if wildly improbable film about Texas rancher Charles Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) who, in his youth, had planned to be an astronaut, and still harbors dreams of completing his homemade rocket ship and blasting off into space.
The townsfolk are alternately impressed, skeptical and derisive about their colorful neighbor who has no compunctions about strutting through town in his silver astronaut suit. After he is denied yet another bank loan, since he already owes thousands of dollars, Farmer throws a brick through a window, a violent act which only seems to reinforce the authorities' feeling that Farmer is mentally unhinged, a supposition already shared by half the audience.
What sees him through is his generally supportive but sometimes exasperated family (including Virginia Madsen as his wife, Augie, Max Thieriot as 15-year-old son Shepard, and Jasper and Logan Polish as his little girls), all on the verge of financial ruin thanks to the whopping rocket-building expenditures and cost of fuel.
There's more serious interference from the FBI (Jon Gries and Mark Polish), Federal Aviation Administration (J.K. Simmons) and CIA, who all have their reasons for impeding his would-be mission. Apart from territorial issues — i.e., that only NASA should be allowed to fly into space — his rocket comes under scrutiny as a "weapon of mass destruction."
Director/co-writer Michael Polish trots out every cliché imaginable (his brother Mark Polish was his script collaborator), and the film has the gravity of a real-life biographical drama, but earns points for its strong affirmation of family, far more than the tiresome "follow your dream" jargon which, in this case, seems fairly wacky.
We won't reveal whether Farmer ever indeed gets off the ground, but we can't resist telling you that after one extremely serious mishap — which results in a near-fatal injury for Farmer — Augie actually encourages him to try again. "Without the rocket, we're just a dysfunctional family," she says with head-scratching logic.
The acting is bit too naturalistically low-key, including the capable supporting performances from Bruce Willis as an ex-astronaut who tries to dissuade Farmer from his mission, Bruce Dern as Augie's doddering father and Tim Blake Nelson as Farmer's lawyer friend.
M. David Mullen's widescreen cinematography is quite lovely, there's an admirable sense that this is a church-going family, and the ending had the audience — until then scoffing at the far-fetched onscreen action — finally getting with the program.
The handful of four-letter words may bother some parents, but it's the overall pacing — which we'll charitably call stately — that may turn off younger viewers.
The film contains a few expletives and crass expressions, brief innuendo and some domestic strife. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
