ASTRONAUT: Dreyfuss Gives Weight To Enjoyable But Maudlin Story

Astronaut is a touching if slightly maudlin story of how it’s never too late to take a shot at your dreams and no one should ever be too old to be listened to. In an age where innovation and the shiningly new is prized above all, the film attempts to show harking back to old skills and attitudes can still have value. Although it does this through lachrymose sentimentality with chasers of uplifting cliches, the story is given weight by the gravitational pull of Richard Dreyfuss‘s leading role and performance.

Teaching an old dog new tricks

The story follows Angus (Richard Dreyfuss), an older widower with his storied career as a civil engineer long behind him and ailing health. He now finds himself irritating his family – with the exception of his relentlessly upbeat grandson – and battling various maladies. At the behest of his grandson, Angus enters a lottery run by billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore, playing a sort of Elon Musk analogue at the head of a SpaceX-type company) for one person to win a place on the first commercial spaceflight. Lying about his age to duck under the 65-year age limit, Angus is unexpectedly selected for the final reality TV-style selection process just as he is packed off to a retirement care home.

In addition to Dreyfuss’ established screen presence, Shelagh McLeod‘s directorial approach elevates her own script, which is fairly middling outside of her lead character. The manner in which she shoots the scenes around the care home, cutting between the faces of residents – some uninterested, some disinterested – as they are entertained in the most depressingly benign fashion augments the story extremely well. Angus has been established by this stage as still having a vitality tempered by his health and grief for his late wife. To see him fading into monotony is deflating, setting up the perfect launchpad as the main uplifting story thread kicks in.

Overly determined to lift spirits into orbit

The film is very much set on being an uplifting story but, although there is nothing wrong with that, its attempts to do this in an unexpected way don’t quite work. Needless to say, Angus’s application doesn’t go quite according to plan once shortlisted and placed under the harsh glare of TV lights. From there, the story pivots to demonstrating Angus’s enduring utility and professional skills even as he is put out to pasture by his family and brazenly ignored by arrogant younger male employees of the space tech company.

This is an interesting angle to take; rather than being handed a reason to reawaken his lust for life, Angus proves it to himself and the people around him as a result of his own agency and skill. This is all very ably abetted by Dreyfuss, who musters up an extremely watchable righteous indignation as Angus strains to be heard. However, the minor trappings of the story have a rather more forced feel. Uplifting grandchildren, swelling musical cues, recurring comet/shooting star motifs, sudden supporting character sympathy, and (that most often used mechanism of) falsely injected urgency all ring far more familiar and cliched. Not content to let the central character arc speak for itself, the script is peppered with sentimental imagery and weepy dialogue for ancillary characters.

However, the lead role is still a compelling one, performed with charisma by Dreyfuss. Some of the key themes about valuing wisdom and experience, in addition to the more immediately obvious call for the retention of hope, are delivered well through him. The story’s flight path here is a more inventive one than simply having his character deliver trite wise anecdotes, or delivering pep talks, instead presenting a scenario whereby he makes his voice heard.

Examining this particular vehicle with an emotionless instrument will set off all sorts of alarms around saccharinity levels, but the despite some design flaws, Astronaut sticks its landing enjoyably enough thanks to the command of Dreyfuss and a novel angle of attack.

Have you seen Astronaut? What is your favourite Richard Dreyfuss performance? Let us know in the comments below!

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