Featured Image Credit: Amazon Studios
Topics: Entertainment, Movies
Marissa Dow
In case you didn’t get the memo from Glenn Powell and his tiny dog, the romantic comedy is back and bigger than ever, baby. And Glenn isn’t the only cuspy A-lister getting in on all the fun. Emma Roberts recently piqued the public’s attention when she categorically rejected the label of nepo baby because her family connections in Hollywood have only lost her jobs, rather than helped her earn them, according to Emma (her dad is the successful actor Eric Roberts, the brother to her even more famous aunt, Julia). Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or deep breaths left in my daily quota of exasperated sighs to explain to the children of Hollywood families that no one has ever suggested that their obvious leg up disqualifies their hard-trained talent. I do, however, have all the energy in the world to unpack Emma’s new action romance comedy, Space Cadet. In the Amazon Prime original film, Emma plays a party girl turned NASA astronaut (yes you read that right) who is obsessed with leaving the alligators and dive bars of Florida behind for outer space to vibe amongst the planets (planets only slightly bigger than the rock on her finger thanks to her engagement to fellow actor Cody John). I bet that logline has your attention. So is Space Cadet a good movie, worth watching? Hop in my rocket, I’m about to launch a lot of thoughts and feelings.
I ingested all one hour and 50 minutes of Emma Robert’s Space Cadet, and I can confidently say I would do it again. To no one’s surprise, the movie won’t be winning any Oscars come next winter, but the level of insanity the movie manages to pack into 110 minutes is genuinely applause-worthy. Space Cadet does something many movies won’t nowadays: dare to be entirely unserious with its whole chest. The completely unpredictable otherwordly plotlines and dialogue had us on our toes from gator wrestling in a mud pit to flying a military-grade fighter jet completely blind (spoiler alert: she slays it!!). This movie is essentially the girl bossiest girl bossing ever captured on camera: Rex will succeed at all costs, and it’s dangerous fun to go along with the film’s insistence that you root for her if only you can suspend decimate disbelief. It’s like the movie’s creators saw Legally Blonde, Top Gun, and House Bunny and said, “Hold my beer. I’m about to do something so brave: make blonde girls unstoppable again.” About 22 seconds into the screening, me and my fellow movie buffs asked ourselves if we happened to miss that the movie was a parody. What we would soon learn is Emma and her fellow AsCans (the NASA astronaut candidates vying for a spot in the summer space launch) were actually dead serious. I implore you to hit up your goofiest girlfriends, hoard as many bottles of wine and guilty pleasure snacks your arms can carry from the nearest Trader Joe’s, and follow Emma Roberts, Tom Hopper, and Gabrielle Union to a different universe where all of this makes sense.
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Emma Stone plays Tiffany AKA Rex, who prematurely gave up on her pursuit of academic excellence when her mom died, to help take care of her dad. Since then she’s been chasing vibes and shots with her best friend Nadine, who has the most extensive Gen-Z pregnancy wardrobe of all time. After being inspired by seeing her high school crush at their five-year reunion, who so-not-creepily stared at a picture of Rex as his desktop background to keep him going while trailblazing the movie’s version of Space-X, Rex decides to apply for the NASA astronaut program with zero technical or practical experience because she’s the type of girl that takes shoot for the stars literally. But she does such a bad job on the application that Nadine steps in to rewrite her essay and falsify her resume which gets Rex a spot training under the leaders of the program, Pam Proctor (Gabrielle Union) and Dr. Logan O’Leary (The Umbrella Academy’s Tom Hopper). As the straightlaced British Logan takes his time checking Rex’s “references” (Nadine faking different voices from her very Googleable business lines stumps literal NASA), he becomes more and more charmed by Rex’s complete incompetence fresh attitude during the AsCans training. Meanwhile, every other student except for Rex’s hyper-anxious roommate is kind of pissed she’s there because she and her quirky side braids are scientifically out of place. But with a few weeks of studying and a can-do attitude, Rex aces the Mars exercise and has won over her peers. That’s of course when Logan and Pam finally realize she’s not a whale-saving doctor, but a party girl from the swamps of Florida. Womp, womp, all is lost… until Rex’s former classmates, now in space, get into trouble during their mission. Only Rex’s unconventional education can save them (yes, you will see Emma Roberts zero-gravity flipping on a green screen).