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‘The Space Between Us’ drowns its potentially smart sci-fi in romantic cheese

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Asa Butterfield and Britt Robertson star.

Two and a half stars

The Space Between Us Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Gary Oldman. Directed by Peter Chelsom. Rated PG-13. Now playing citywide.

Despite a plot that sounds like it comes straight from a bestselling young-adult novel, sci-fi teen romance The Space Between Us is actually based on an original story by screenwriter Allan Loeb, who specializes in sappy, self-important emotional manipulation (Collateral Beauty, Things We Lost in the Fire). Space starts with an intriguing concept, exploring the life of a child born during a NASA mission to Mars, but the science is sidelined in favor of a Nicholas Sparks-style doomed romance, with cheesy sentiment in place of philosophical and ethical concerns.

Teenager Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) has spent his entire life in a colony on Mars, after his astronaut mother died giving birth to him (she was unaware of her pregnancy before embarking on her mission). As the universe’s only Martian, Gardner feels lonely and longs to travel to Earth, but growing up on Mars has warped his physical development in ways that might make it difficult for him to survive on Earth. Even so, he convinces his overseers to let him make the journey, and then promptly runs away, determined to track down the father he never met.

He does that with the help of teen rebel Tulsa (Britt Robertson), with whom he’s been communicating online, telling her that he’s confined to a New York City apartment for health reasons. The remarkably trusting Tulsa breaks numerous laws to help Gardner run from his well-meaning NASA handlers, in a plot reminiscent of ’80s sci-fi movies like E.T. and Firestarter (or Jeff Nichols’ recent Midnight Special). But there’s actually nothing sinister in the intentions of space-colony honcho Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman, overacting to compensate for the mediocre writing) or motherly scientist Kendra (Carla Gugino), who just want to keep Gardner safe.

The suspense elements of the plot hinge on the annoying device of one character keeping a very basic piece of information from another character, and the filmmakers rush through the sci-fi trappings to focus on Gardner and Tulsa’s gooey romance. Former child actor Butterfield has grown into an ungainly adult, and his stilted performance drags the movie down, especially opposite the charming Robertson. At 26, she’s been playing teenagers for nearly a decade, though, and her maturity is mismatched with Butterfield’s awkwardness. The movie portrays Gardner as the equivalent of an android learning to be human, even though he’s grown up around people his entire life.

Still, there are a handful of nice moments, and Gugino and Oldman do their best when they get a chance to debate the movie’s more intriguing sci-fi ideas. Most of the time, though, director Peter Chelsom goes for the sun-dappled love story, in a future world barely any different from our own. The movie starts out with some ambitious ideas, but settles for mushy affairs of the heart in the end.

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