In 1958, the members of Team Daedalus, a group of top Air Force test pilots, were ready to serve their country as the first Americans in space but were pushed aside. Now, as a Russian satellite fails and is about to crash into earth, Team Daedalus is back in action in a rescue mission.This slice of cornball Americana is so much fun you’ll be tempted to stand up and salute. Director and costar Clint Eastwood manages to turn what might have been ludicrous into a jubilant tribute to age and experience, and Space Cowboys succeeds as two movies in one–a comedy about retired pilots given one last shot at glory and an Apollo 13-like thriller with all the requisite heroics. With a dream cast of Hollywood vets playing old farts described in tabloids as “The Ripe Stuff,” the movie jumps from a 1958 prologue (establishing their lost bid for space travel) to 40-plus years later, when the retired Air Force aces (Eastwood, James Garner, Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones) volunteer to rescue a falling Russian satellite that only Eastwood’s character can repair.
It turns out that Russky bird is a cold war leftover equipped with live nuclear warheads, and Space Cowboys revs up to a rousing climax in which our heroes prove their mettle. But first the comedy: watching these codgers struggle to pass NASA’s physical tests is a total hoot, with running gags about wrinkles, dentures, and oysters for sagging libidos. (Sutherland is the scene-stealer, but they’re all having a blast.) Once in space, the movie gets down to business, and the visual-effects wizards at Industrial Light and Magic provide stunning vistas from Earth’s orbit; a shot looking down at the boot of Italy is particularly beautiful. A subplot involving a weasely NASA administrator (James Cromwell) is rather perfunctory, but it hardly matters. Space Cowboys earns its wings, once again demonstrating Eastwood’s comfort with any genre he chooses. –Jeff Shannon
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April 2, 2008
#1
This movie is not only ridiculous, but boring, bad directed and way too long. It is cliches after cliches. Eastwood with no doubt made the worst movie of his career. The plot is a joke, non of the characters are believable. It is a total lack of respect. Do Not Watch This Movie.
April 2, 2008
#2
It is obvious people are rating this movie based on the calibre of actors in it.That is why I watched it in the first place, especially because of Tommy Lee.Unfortunately it was a waste of time and I slept off on it.It is just another predictable space movie, nothing more.Shows a loss of ideas and lack of creativity.Nothing exceptional.It is deja vu.Why did they give it that title anyway?
April 2, 2008
#3
“Rubbish, Rubish, Rubish Film, how i wonder how they made you, with Clint Eastwood acting rubbish. Rubbish Rubbish, Rubbish film ,how I wonder how they made you?”
April 2, 2008
#4
First complaint here is that it just wasn’t funny. So much so, that I couldn’t even recognize what was supposed to be funny half the time. I did recognize Jay Leno’s joke as intending to be funny and it was the one time I laughed all movie.
Lots of Clint Eastwood posturing and acting all tough and melodramatic here. The title is a confession of the fact that Mr. Eastwood does not know how to do anything but play a cowboy, and that looks pretty silly in modern day costumes after awhile.
Most of the charm of the film is supposed to come from what looks to me like “reverse ageism,” if such a thing exists, where old people get to put down people from my generation for supposedly having all knowledge but no spirit. That’s what my generation needs, yet another underestimation and put down from the older ones as they tell us how disappointing we are. Yet another attempt of an immature generation (post-world war & pre70s) that has to run around trying to prove it can still be cool, even cooler than the following younger generations— who it continually tries to tell what is cool. Yes, that is the ideal for aging, not the old finding the dignity, wisdom and strengths of age and helping to guide the young, but rather constantly trying to beat the young. It is not the young that make for the unhealthy and dissatisfying obsession with youth in our culture.
Add to this a paint-by-numbers evil beaurocrat villain, a cause for the mission that is nothing more than a thinly constructed plot device, an awfully bland minister/astronaut character with no genuine religious distinctiveness who is just there to tease himself for being a clergyman or to say the solemn religious word every now and then. He’s not here for character development but for the sake of novelty and, who knows, maybe to represent the old geazers who still believe in stuff–vaguely.
Finally there is the uneven and predictable attempt at a “serious” ending. Here the film even gets to ape Deep Impact and Armeggedon with a heroic death in space. BUT WITH A TWIST! This time our courageous hero decides to stay and die because he’s got cancer anyway. Isn’t that nice, the movie has a point after all, when you get old and diseased, it’s better just go off and die for the good of society and before you lose one bit of your twenty year old bravado.
Some fine actors and an actress all wasted. Clint Eastwood and his plot are both as one dimensional as ever.
But hey, if you’re over 50, enjoy the fantasy of not having to grow up!
April 2, 2008
#5
This film may be funny for old people only. I can’t believe I paid 7 dollars to see this pathetic, not funny and boring film! Clint Estwood, it is obvious that it is time for you to retire. You are tired dude. Don’t try this unbearable load of trash. AVOID IT!