This was a movie that had a lot of potential, but took excessive liberties with the plot, one supposes due to Hollywood trying to market the movie to kids. These excesses will cause serious problems for all adults, and will likely degrade the enjoyment for any but the younger group of viewers (I would guess 10 years old or less). After all, kids are pretty good at knowing when someone or something is not telling the truth.
Young Billy (Alex Linz)--nicely chosen as the son of Wilhelm von Huber, the lead scientist of the Mercury program--is having a tough at school. Billy is having problems with his new schoolmates because of his German background. He also struggles with the remoteness of his father, and the recent loss of his mother. He makes friends with a chimpanzee being trained to go into space on the first Mercury rocket, and the story goes from there. Bads guys, pretty older and younger girls, a strong soundtrack, and comedic characters give this movie a lot of positives. Add in the factual basis for the movie, the strong nationalistic themes, and the cute chimps, and one would predict a winner of a family movie.
Unfortunately, there are a few serious flaws in this movie. First is the movie's lack of depth about behavioral and rocket science. Anyone might believe that a boy that, for some unknown explained reason, forms a strong bond with a chimpanzee might be able to assist in its training. But this movie unfortunately provides no meaningful dialog or action along these lines.
Parents will be disappointed in the lack of truthfulness in the presentation of NASA security and engineering. Billy discovers, in a nice plot twist, that the rocket is sabotaged the night before the launch. He, his father, and two German scientists proceed to check the rocket themselves. Billy ends up inside the rocket fixing a fuel line connection himself. Parents will wonder why the plot took such a silly, and potentially dangerous, twist (do we want our kids really thinking that they should be helping fix anything remotely close to this kind of problem?!!). Kids will be left without any understanding of the effort that literally hundreds of engineers and scientists go through to make certain that everything is "right" with such launches.
Worst are the later scenes of chaos in the mission control room, with Billy saving the day by literally screaming into a headset for the chimp to flip a switch in the rocket. I cringed at these unnecessary scenes; no doubt Billy could have saved the day by talking to the chimp in a calm, realistic mission control room. Did the writers, director and producers of this movie really think parents--and even the kids?--would react positively to these ridiculous scenes?
Oh well, as I said above, younger kids will like this movie. Adults will go away wondering about the lack of intelligence in the movie industry.
All said and done, not a bad family movie, just not a very good one.
6 out of 10
Young Billy (Alex Linz)--nicely chosen as the son of Wilhelm von Huber, the lead scientist of the Mercury program--is having a tough at school. Billy is having problems with his new schoolmates because of his German background. He also struggles with the remoteness of his father, and the recent loss of his mother. He makes friends with a chimpanzee being trained to go into space on the first Mercury rocket, and the story goes from there. Bads guys, pretty older and younger girls, a strong soundtrack, and comedic characters give this movie a lot of positives. Add in the factual basis for the movie, the strong nationalistic themes, and the cute chimps, and one would predict a winner of a family movie.
Unfortunately, there are a few serious flaws in this movie. First is the movie's lack of depth about behavioral and rocket science. Anyone might believe that a boy that, for some unknown explained reason, forms a strong bond with a chimpanzee might be able to assist in its training. But this movie unfortunately provides no meaningful dialog or action along these lines.
Parents will be disappointed in the lack of truthfulness in the presentation of NASA security and engineering. Billy discovers, in a nice plot twist, that the rocket is sabotaged the night before the launch. He, his father, and two German scientists proceed to check the rocket themselves. Billy ends up inside the rocket fixing a fuel line connection himself. Parents will wonder why the plot took such a silly, and potentially dangerous, twist (do we want our kids really thinking that they should be helping fix anything remotely close to this kind of problem?!!). Kids will be left without any understanding of the effort that literally hundreds of engineers and scientists go through to make certain that everything is "right" with such launches.
Worst are the later scenes of chaos in the mission control room, with Billy saving the day by literally screaming into a headset for the chimp to flip a switch in the rocket. I cringed at these unnecessary scenes; no doubt Billy could have saved the day by talking to the chimp in a calm, realistic mission control room. Did the writers, director and producers of this movie really think parents--and even the kids?--would react positively to these ridiculous scenes?
Oh well, as I said above, younger kids will like this movie. Adults will go away wondering about the lack of intelligence in the movie industry.
All said and done, not a bad family movie, just not a very good one.
6 out of 10