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Average User Score: 6 (11 sources)

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pokeyfz

-1

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Not as good as I thought it would be. It had way too much language, and was very slow moving in the begining. Not a good family film due to language.

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Posted sep 25, 2007 8:45 am pt

austinbarrow

-1

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I must admit that I started watching this movie with low expectations, and for that reason I was quite surprised how much enjoyment I found while viewing it. The greatest thing about this film is that the space shuttle could have been replaced...
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I must admit that I started watching this movie with low expectations, and for that reason I was quite surprised how much enjoyment I found while viewing it. The greatest thing about this film is that the space shuttle could have been replaced with any dream that we have as adults, that people tell us we are crazy for pursuing. The universality of this dilemma is what sold the film for me.

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Posted aug 10, 2007 5:07 am pt

ziccarda

-1

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Before going into this movie I was expecting something along the lines of "October Sky." Small town dreamer hoping to conquer the biggest thing out there: space. The movie delivered during the first half, but then it just got weird. [+] Read Full Review

Before going into this movie I was expecting something along the lines of "October Sky." Small town dreamer hoping to conquer the biggest thing out there: space. The movie delivered during the first half, but then it just got weird.

I think the halfway point marked where the story went from "trying to stay close to the true story about the farmer turned astronaut" to "let's finish the movie the quickest way possible." All the sudden he's making decisions that make no sense and you think it's a dream sequence, but it never comes to an end. After a short montage about following your dreams and reaching them, the movie ended. I was disappointed.

At least I didn't go in expecting too much.

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Posted aug 1, 2007 1:42 pm pt

• [+] Entertainment Weekly
  
  83
  After teeny indies, this studio release retains the trademark love of warped American gothic that the Polishes share with David Lynch and the brothers Ethan and Joel Coen. But the unexpected streak of yearning sunniness -- the Spielbergian touch of boyhood dreams propelling a grown man -- gives The Astronaut Farmer a warmth that's new for them.

  by Lisa Schwarzbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] LA Weekly
  
  80
  This is gloriously self-aware hokum, a fantasy movie that is, above all, about our need for fantasy and escapism -- and even our need for movies like The Astronaut Farmer -- to help us combat the depression and disappointments of the everyday.

  by Scott Foundas | Read Full Review »
• [+] Los Angeles Times
  
  80
  Much of the credit for the movie succeeding goes to Thornton. In his able hands, Farmer is not so much someone who simply has faith in what he is doing but a man who believes with incontrovertible knowledge of what can be accomplished.

  by Kevin Crust | Read Full Review »
• [+] Premiere
  
  75
  Still, the film actually earns the description of being inspirational, not only to those of us with a dream, but to those who thought the quality family film had died long ago.

  by Stephen Saito | Read Full Review »
• [+] ReelViews
  
  75
  The Astronaut Farmer is one of those movies that makes an audience want to cheer and clap.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Daily News
  
  75
  It's hard not to like a movie so determined to make you feel the love of a family, to make you feel that every dream can become a reality and that every mortgage - no matter how close to foreclosure - can be rescued by the sudden death of a family member and his inheritance.

  by Jack Mathews | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Post
  
  75
  The Astronaut Farmer stalls narratively in the third act, but rest assured it finally achieves liftoff. See it before it disappears into the ether.

  by Lou Lumenick | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  75
  The Astronaut Farmer's goofy quality makes it totally endearing. It's also super entertaining. Critics are fond of referring to movies as a "great ride." With this one, the words couldn't be more apt.

  by Ruthe Stein | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  70
  Sure, it's the corniest of conceits, but "Astronaut" taps delightfully into one of our deepest cultural values: the one about the pursuit of happiness. And the movie's unpretentious lightheartedness, which echoes the old-fashioned, corn-fed lore of Frank Capra, or even "The Andy Griffith Show," makes it blissfully easy to sign on for this good-natured voyage.

  by Desson Thomson | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Hollywood Reporter
  
  70
  The Astronaut Farmer, is goofy, wholesome and, well, sweet. Despite some droll humor and on-target political jabs delivered deadpan by a uniformly strong cast, "Astronaut" often is too corny for its own good; it could have used more of those zingy lines.

  by Sura Wood | Read Full Review »
• [+] Variety
  
  70
  Thornton carries the film with relaxed authority, though the earnest tone doesn't let him explore the nuttier aspects of a character who, from any reasoned distance ought look more screwy than heroic. Madsen is radiant.

  by Dennis Harvey | Read Full Review »
• [+] Village Voice
  
  70
  This movie works precisely because it's bereft of modern cinema's cynicism.

  by Robert Wilonsky | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  70
  The opening shots, of Farmer on horseback in his space suit, hint at a strangeness that the rest of the movie never quite lives up to, but it does have a visual freshness that makes the bromides and clichés palatable.

  by A.O. Scott | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Onion (A.V. Club)
  
  67
  Too odd for a studio movie, too cornpone for the independent scene, The Astronaut Farmer finds its creators stuck awkwardly between worlds, making what amounts to a deep curiosity.

  by Scott Tobias | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  67
  If the Polish brothers haven't quite mastered the mechanics of mainstream filmmaking, they have succeeded in bringing an independent spirit to the studio film.

  by Bill White | Read Full Review »