Ad Astra

Ad Astra must be Martian for “boring; tedious.”

I really need to say nothing more in this review than that Ad Astra has to be one of the most meaningless films to have been released this year. Other than some occasional great special effects that give the film some visual impact, it takes a long time for the movie to go absolutely nowhere.

While the film lasts 2 hours and 2 minutes, I can only say that it would have helped if Director James Gray had shortened the film to two minutes. In summary fashion, Brad Pitt plays Roy McBride, an astronaut flying to Neptune to try and locate his missing father. It seems that powerful cosmic rays are being sent from this location that threaten to destroy life on Earth.

To get to Neptune, you watch Pitt land first on the Moon and then on Mars. For unknown reasons, his crew is hunted by bandits riding land rovers for reasons that are totally unexplained while he sought to board his landing craft after his initial Moon landing.

Like everything else in this disastrous film, that encounter was never explained. Neither was Tommy Lee Jones’ performance as Pitt’s father, a bearded astronaut who has been living alone in space for several decades. Add to that the ridiculous role that both Donald Sutherland and Liv Tyler were forced to play as Pitts’ mentor and distant lover and you get some idea as to why this film is a complete waste of time and money.

Let me close by noting repeated absurd scenes where NASA forces Pitt to daily dictate his mental state for their review. This goes on and on to the point where you have to resist yelling, “I hope everyone quickly dies and drift off into space so that I can rid myself of the misguided hope that this film had some meaning.”