Reviews

The Astronaut Farmer

99 minutes too long

By PETE KEOUGH | February 21, 2007

1.0 Stars

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Mark and Michael Polish showed a surreal eye in Twin Falls Idaho, and their The Astronaut Farmer has one dreamlike scene to recommend it. As the opening credits roll, a man in astronaut regalia rides on horseback across the plains to rescue a stray calf. Pretty eerie — too bad the film fills us in on the man and his dream to send himself into orbit. Charles Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) had been drummed out of NASA not for driving cross-country in a diaper to kidnap his romantic rival but for aborting a mission because of a “family situation.” Since then he’s been building an ICBM in his barn big enough to merit a pre-emptive air strike if it had been erected in North Korea. The way to play this is for laughs, but the Polish brothers opt for tears, and compounding the film’s earnest absurdity is its length: not one but two tension-filled countdowns take place as Farmer and family try to make dad the dumbest rocket jockey since Don Knotts.