Space dreams: Implausible, yes, but Thornton elevates astronaut wannabe's mad tale

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(Free-Press-Release.com) February 23, 2007 --

This is the kind of film where you're watching some strange madness transpiring onscreen and you're thinking, "I'll bet this is a dream sequence"-- only it's not, it's just more cheery weirdness. I mean, we're talking about a movie that opens with Billy Bob Thornton riding a horse on his sprawling Texas ranch while wearing a full astronaut's outfit, like a 7-year-old who wants to keep wearing his Halloween costume in the first few days of November. They're telling us from the start that either we can fly along with 'em or we can stay on the ground and abort our mission of taking this film seriously. Either way, they're off and running.

Perhaps recognizing that the material is brazen enough, Thornton makes the wise choice to play it straight and sincere as a middle-aged farmer named Charlie Farmer (good thing his chosen profession isn't proctology), who has a beautiful, supportive wife. She's played by Virginia Madsen, who is framed and lit as if she's the gorgeous mom in an orange juice commercial. Madsen has essentially the same role Amy Madigan played in "Field of Dreams." Charlie also has two ever-giggling little daughters who think their dad is more magical than Santa Claus, and a teenage son who reveres his father in a way that teenage sons rarely do in the movies, or for that matter, in real life.
And have I mentioned the wild-haired Bruce Dern as Charlie's father-in-law, who shows up occasionally to tell Charlie he's the greatest dad in the universe? (Charlie's kinda like George Bailey post-hallucination.)

Just about everybody in town loves Charlie, too, even though there's a better than 50-50 chance Charlie is clinically insane.

Source: http://www.yahoo.com
POSTED BY RICHARD ROEPER