In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe described how a well-funded alliance of buttoned-down scientists, politicians, generals and ex-Nazi engineers succeeded in turning one of mankind’s most enduring dreams into reality, and, in doing so, bureaucratized the wild blue yonder.
In the Polish brothers’ atypically mainstream The Astronaut Farmer, a former aeronautics engineer and fighter pilot challenges the notion that NASA owns all domestic rights to the heavens by building an Atlas missile on his Texas ranch. As drawn by Billy Bob Thornton, Charles Farmer is at once doggedly determined and pleasantly unassuming ... a world-class dreamer who could very well have been descended from such mythic airmen as Icarus, Chuck Yeager and the Wright brothers. Instead of seeking the imprimatur of NASA, or funding by corporate America, the amateur space cowboy stakes the success of his orbital mission on the emotional and strategic support of his family.
Like most of their small-town neighbors, Audrey Farmer (Virginia Madsen) spends most of the movie humoring Farmer’s vast conceit, wavering only when he pulls their kids out of school, FBI agents raid the property, credit-card purchases are denied and foreclosure notices received.
Mark and Michael Polish don’t come right out and say Farmer may be exercising poor judgment by using a wooden barn as a launching pad, but they aren’t anarchists, either. As much as they want audiences to see their middle-aged protagonist as a last vestige of a dying breed of American individualists, it’s unlikely they’d willingly send their children (two of whom perform splendidly here) to a school within 50 miles of his potentially combustible spread. Rated PG, The Astronaut Farmer will appeal equally to parents and children. While there’s no mistaking the bad guys, it’s nice to see that the townsfolk weren’t cut from cardboard patterns of yokels handed out at film schools. It’s also worth noting that Bruce Dern, who played a farming astronaut 35 years ago, in Silent Running, appears here as Farmer’s supportive father-in-law.
Bruce Willis also makes a welcome uncredited appearance. The extras include a talk with astronaut David Scott, a decent making-of featurette and a superfluous bloopers-and-outtakes reel.
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The Astronaut Farmer
***
Rated PG