The Astronaut Farmer

• All systems are "Go" for Charles Farmer. He's faced bank foreclosure, neighborhood naysayers and a government alarmed by his huge purchase of high-grade fuel, but now he's ready to blast into space inside the homemade rocket he built in his barn. Just be home in time for dinner, Charlie.Billy Bob Thornton portrays Charlie in this charmer about chasing dreams.and about what it means to be a family

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Citation Details
Title: Billy Bob blasts off; Thornton plays DIY spaceman in The Astronau! t Farmer.(Movies - Articles)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 17, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: c1

Distributed by Thomson GaleAll systems are "Go" for Charles Farmer. He's faced bank foreclosure, neighborhood naysayers and a government alarmed by his huge purchase of high-grade fuel, but now he's ready to blast into space inside the homemade rocket he built in his barn. Just be home in time for dinner, Charlie. Billy Bob Thornton portrays Charlie in this charmer about chasing dreams...and about what it means to be a family. 10,000 pounds of rocket fuel alone can't lift Charlie into the heavens. He needs a launch/recovery crew, and he has one of the best: his wife (Virginia Madsen) and children, dreamers all. They have liftoff. Our spirits have uplift. Gravity cannot hold down our dreams. The ! Astronaut Farmer is that kind of movie.

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If you can give The Astronaut Farmer the big, bounding leap of faith it requires, you'll probably enjoy this good-natured film about the importance of holding on to your dreams. The title character (and the dreamer in question) is Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton), a Texas ranch owner and former aeronautics engineer who's got a homemade rocket in his barn and a dream to blast into space. Even though Charlie's deeply in debt and threatened with foreclosure, his wife (Virginia Madsen) and kids are deeply supportive of Charlie's Earth-orbit mission, even when he attracts the glaring attention of a seasoned Air Force colonel (played by Bruce Willis, in an uncredited role), the FAA, the FBI, and the national media. "If we don't have our dreams, we have nothing," says Charlie at a particularly desperate impasse, and this loopy, offbeat, and unabashedly sentimental drama embraces that message with disarming sincerity.

Suspension o! f disbelief is a challenge when the movie glosses over so many of its logistical details (like, where does one buy an old NASA space capsule?), and in trying for a kind of Capra-esque, eccentrically Western spin on the American dream, the Polish twins--director Michael and cowriter/actor Mark (making their mainstream debut after such indie hits as Twin Falls, Idaho and Northfork)--are only marginally successful in making Charlie's ambition genuinely believable. The film works much better as a kind of post space-age fable for families, and it's just involving enough to make its climax emotionally rewarding, mostly because Thornton, Madsen, and their costars (including Bruce Dern and Tim Blake Nelson) handle the delicate material with the earnestness it needs to be marginally convincing. Elton John's "Rocket Man" is predictably heard over the closing credits (accordingly, Charlie's launch-time is "zero hours, nine a.m."), and at a time when several adventurous e! ntrepreneurs (including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos) are gra! dually d eveloping a civilian space-flight industry, The Astronaut Farmer is an admirable yet forgivably flawed reminder that we should never stop reaching for the stars. --Jeff Shannon