Space Cadet (2024) Review!!

Synopsis – Rex, a Florida party girl, turns out to be the only hope for the NASA space program after a fluke puts her in training with other candidates who may have better resumés, but don’t have her smarts, heart, and moxie.

My Take – While last year’s Amazon Prime release, A Million Miles Away, an excellent biopic on José M. Hernández, had us believe that a farm worker could become an astronaut with sheer determination and hard work.

This time around, the streamer’s latest release wants us to believe that a Florida party girl/bartender can also become an astronaut, but only after submitting a fraudulent application with details, accomplishments, and references that NASA wouldn’t bother verifying until after admission into the program.

Written and directed by Liz W. Garcia (The Lifeguard, One Percent More Humid), the film is clearly aiming to become yet another mildly rousing story of an underestimated blonde excelling in a more serious field, something on the lines of Private Benjamin (1980) and Legally Blonde (2001), however, the film is an absolute mess of lackluster writing and predictable plotting that plays its outright silly plot so seriously that it leaves you wondering if the original first draft was turned into a comedy last minute.

Despite Emma Roberts‘s best efforts, the painfully unfunny comedy is just too lazy with too many ridiculous plot twists that allows the silliness to peak to infinity and beyond.

Sure, one can argue that comedies don’t have to be very deep or intellectually structured to entertain, but even in such heightened territory, there has to be some sense of structure and film just isn’t smart or slick enough to have us suspend disbelief entirely, instead feeling more like a silly and forgettable Disney Channel knock-off.

For anyone looking for some light-hearted laughs, fun set pieces, and heartwarming characters, I’d suggest to look elsewhere.

The story follows Tiffany ‘Rex’ Simpson (Emma Roberts), a party girl and bartender who had let go of her dreams of flying to Mars when her very supportive mom fell sick and eventually passed away. Despite earning a full scholarship to Georgia Tech due to her strong academic record, she decided to stay back in her small-town Florida to take care of her grieving dad, Calvin Simpson (Sam Robards) and help in his ghost touring business.

Now after spending the last 10 years partying and building innovative machines, that go mostly unnoticed, Rex finds new inspiration when she runs into Toddrick Spencer (Sebastián Yatra), her high-school crush and now-CEO of a space tourism company, at their high school reunion. With a newfound resolution, Rex fires off a heartfelt letter to NASA asking for admission into the astronaut training program.

However, the letter is intercepted and, well, enhanced, by her well-meaning BFF Nadine (Poppy Liu) to a flourishing application. An application that lands at the table of program directors Pam Proctor (Gabrielle Union) and Logan O’Leary (Tom Hopper). Soon, Rex is packing up her bedazzled clothes and heading to NASA, with no idea what’s in store.

Right from its opening montage giving Rex’s backstory to its closing titles, the film wants to bring a largely quirky and comedic twist to the world of NASA. But in spite of writer-director Liz W. Garcia‘s best efforts to create a colorful cast of characters and a fresh approach to the iconic space company, it ultimately results in a group of primarily annoying people and painfully unfunny sequences.

On paper, Prime Video’s latest comedy might seem like a funny take on the routine American underdog story about an unbridgeable gap between the commoner and the Man. But, on screen the story about how a college dropout gets into NASA’s top astronaut training program by fluke fluctuates its tonality between being a whimsical satire and a serious drama.

Even the stakes are really low at all times. I mean so low that you won’t even think about tension once during the film’s runtime. Even when the space crew is in danger, every character’s reaction to it makes it not a big deal. Making it feel more like an old Disney Channel original flick.

At one point, this imposter turns over a new leaf within mere days and becomes a tough competitor to trained scientists in the program, just because she had a dream about how all of us are made of the same stardust. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far, even in a comedy, and yet the film frequently asks us to turn our brains off and enjoy the wacky adventure Rex and her friends embark on to become astronauts.

Whether it’s racing through their various training steps, the film aims for a number of low-brow jokes that don’t offer character growth. Taking a comical route is fine, but it is hard to believe how the background checks are conducted, or why none of the characters pose any emotional or intellectual depth, the film leaves you confused with its tonal approach.

The biggest issue being how the film treats its NASA expert characters. They display no semblance of intelligence to be part of the organization, let alone high-ranking members trusted with training prospective astronauts to fly hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment into space.

Nevertheless, despite the film’s obvious problems, it’s hard to deny that Emma Roberts did her best to make the film a generally charming watch. Roberts, who is also onboard as an executive producer, relishes the goofy heights of her leading role, keeping the energy high in every scene of the film, even when she’s at her lowest.

Even Tom Hopper does a great job acting against type as a dorky science guy, while Gabrielle Union is wasted in what good have been a stand out character. Most of the laughs come from Poppy Liu, who steals the show as Rex’s best friend.

In other roles, Desi Lydic, Kuhoo Verma, Yasha Jackson, Andrew Call, Josephine Huang, Troy Iwata, Sebastián Yatra, Sam Robards and David Foley try to make the most of their one dimensional characters. On the whole, ‘Space Cadet‘ is a forgettable nonsensical comedy that wastes the talents of a charming Emma Roberts.