SPACE CADET - Mark Reviews Movies

Space Cadet, Amazon MGM Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 3, 2024

If the main character of Space Cadet had been incompetent but lucked her way through NASA astronaut training, that might have made for a decent, if surely unbelievable, comedic premise. If she was fully competent and qualified for the job but faced some stumbling block to overcome, that could have been the setup for an inspirational tale.

Writer/director Liz W. Garcia makes the error of trying to have it both ways with "Rex" Simpson (a charming-enough Emma Roberts), a Florida bartender who is somewhat competent and gets into astronaut training by way of a deceitful application (which she doesn't write, by the way). She's technically good enough to be an astronaut—intelligent, resourceful, willing and capable of taking charge of a tough situation—but only missing out on formal education and professional experience. The comedy here, then, relies on everyone around her being dim and incompetent enough not to notice that Rex shouldn't be in the running.

The premise of Garcia's screenplay falls apart if even one of these other characters could see the obvious or did the bare minimum of a background check before Rex arrives in Houston for training. Since it's a comedy, we're supposed to overlook that massive gap in logic. When it comes to Rex, however, the movie isn't really a comedy, because her dreams of becoming an astronaut and the supposed unfairness that she can't become one on account of circumstances beyond her control are taken seriously.

Something's off in the movie's calculations of its tone and intentions, basically. We're not allowed to laugh at Rex, because everything about her is too sincere to be a joke, and it's difficult to laugh at the situation she's in and the characters who made it possible, because they're too outlandish to even entertain. The movie's stuck from the start and never figures out how to make this material funny or worth taking seriously. Since it wants to do both, it's one big mistake.

In case it isn't clear that Rex isn't meant to be taken as a joke, here's her back story. She was a straight-A student with a passion for science and engineering through high school. Rex even got a full-ride scholarship to a university specializing in technology, but then, her beloved mother became terminally ill, so she stayed home to help with the mother's care. After the mother's death, Rex couldn't bring herself to leave her grieving father (played by Sam Robards), so she took a job as a bartender, started making little inventions in her spare time, and hasn't looked back since.

She does, though, at her ten-year high school reunion, after discovering she was the inspiration for Toddrick (Sebastián Yatra), a billionaire tech giant with ambitions for traveling to Mars (Why doesn't she try to get a job with him?). Deciding she's going to try to get into NASA, Rex fills out an honest application, pleading to the agency's sentimentality, and then, her best friend Nadine (Poppy Liu) makes some "corrections," turning Rex into a perfect candidate on paper. Don't ask why Rex doesn't think to check the final application before sending it, because that's just another reason to question the existence of the entire story.

Anyway, Rex gets into the program (Don't ask, either, why she doesn't question or correct everyone referring to her as "doctor"), in which a group of candidates will be whittled down to four astronauts. In charge are Logan (Tom Hopper) and Pam (Gabrielle Union), who don't think it's strange that Rex doesn't appear to know basic things about her background and don't do a simple web search of her or the many phony references on her application. There are probably several ways to fix this premise (Rex is a test for NASA expanding its qualifications or a PR move, for example), but that would require the filmmakers to think this story through to the end.

They haven't, obviously. Instead, we get some quirky characters among the candidates (such as Rex's oddball roommate, played by Kuhoo Verma, and an overly controlling one, played by Desi Lydic), a few shenanigans involving the training process, and plenty more scenes of Rex making speeches about how much she wants her dreams to come true. She eventually figures out that Nadine filled her application with lies, which undoes whatever innocence she might have in the shockingly simple ruse.

It's not just one or two blunders that lead to the failure of Space Cadet, then. The movie keeps stepping all over itself in trying to justify its dumb plot, its inconsistent tone, and why we should get behind its protagonist. Without the humor or some authentic sense of heart to cover those missteps, they're front and center throughout.

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