The Space Between Us

Name: The Space Between Us
Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi, Drama, Romance
Released: February 3, 2017
Duration: 120 min
Rating: 33
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Brittany Robertson, Carla Gugino, Gary Oldman

2017

METASCORE

Generally unfavorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 83 Ratings

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5.2

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5.2	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 83 Ratings

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The Space Between Us

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Movie Details & Credits

STX Entertainment | Release Date: February 3, 2017 | PG-13

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Brittany Robertson, Carla Gugino, Gary Oldman

Summary: After arriving to help colonize Mars, an astronaut dies while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet – never revealing who the father is. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) – an inquisitive, highly intelligent boy who reaches the age of 16 having only met 14 people in his veryAfter arriving to help colonize Mars, an astronaut dies while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet – never revealing who the father is. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) – an inquisitive, highly intelligent boy who reaches the age of 16 having only met 14 people in his very unconventional upbringing. While searching for clues about his father, and the home planet he’s never known, Gardner begins an online friendship with a street smart girl named Tulsa. When he finally gets a chance to go to Earth, Gardner is eager to experience all of the wonders he could only read about on Mars. But after his explorations begin, scientists discover that Gardner’s organs can’t withstand Earth’s atmosphere. Gardner joins with Tulsa on a race against time to unravel the mysteries of how he came to be, and where he belongs in the universe. … Expand

Director: Peter Chelsom

Genre(s): Adventure, Sci-Fi, Drama, Romance

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 120 min

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Critic Reviews

David Fear

Feb 13, 2017

While director Peter Chelsom (Funny Bones, Serendipity) can functionally guide his cast through their derring-do and dewy-eyed paces, neither he nor screenwriter Allan Loeb can steer the whole endeavor out of Clichéville U.S.A. Read full review

The Film Stage Chelsey Grasso

Feb 2, 2017

It’s a sci-fi-teen-rom-actioner, if you will, and I mean that in the worst way possible. This is a film that doesn’t stick with any genre, but instead clumsily navigates between all three, ultimately leaving the viewer feeling shortchanged in every area. Read full review

Chris Nashawaty

Feb 3, 2017

The Space Between Us attempts to take young love to literally new heights before crash-landing into an earthbound hash of schmaltzy clichés and romantic absurdities. Read full review

Movie Nation Roger Moore

Feb 2, 2017

The science is sloppy, the sentimentality is sloppier in “The Space Between Us,” a sci-fi romance pairing up agreeable leads in a cut-and-paste script. Read full review

Brad Wheeler

Feb 2, 2017

A shameless pastiche of Starman’s alien-on-Earth sci-fi, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble’s medical pathos and any number of young-lovers-on-the-run stories, The Space Between Us may set back the Earth-Mars relationship light years. Read full review

Steve Persall

Feb 7, 2017

The Space Between Us is romantic science fiction with zero gravity and less to recommend. Read full review

Alonso Duralde

Feb 2, 2017

It’s hard not to engage in eye-rolling over what already promises to be one of 2017’s worst movies: The Space Between Us spends so much time piling one daffy, laughable plot beat upon another that it never bothers to nail down the characters. Read full review

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User Reviews

iamalanramirez

Aug 1, 2017

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. it's amagazing the story thye dram is loved and sad and the actors are beautiful and cool i'm a loved the drama and story son increibles ademas me encanta la localidad donde se narra… Expand

2 of 3 users found this helpful21

KaptenVideo

Mar 22, 2017

You know how it goes. The boy (Asa Butterfield) meets the girl (Britt Robertson), there's mutual liking and they want to meet... but there's a space between them. So he will travel to Earth from the Mars colony where he was born. Also starring: Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, and B.D. Wong,You know how it goes. The boy (Asa Butterfield) meets the girl (Britt Robertson), there's mutual liking and they want to meet... but there's a space between them. So he will travel to Earth from the Mars colony where he was born. Also starring: Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, and B.D. Wong, because even the coolest teenagers need some adults around.

"The Space Between Us" rides on the current wave of Young Adult, or YA for short, novels and movies which has dowsed the cinemas for the last ten years or so. It's still about romance, some sci-fi and action like the most of them (or at least the most popular of them) but it brings some refreshing changes to the menu.

It's based on an original screenplay and not novel. It offers sci-fi and action without relying on done to death YA cliches (dystopian society, dating or fighting supernatural beings, etc). It puts characters in real danger so you can't always predict whether everybody's gonna make it. It doesn't have clear-cut good and bad guys...

And last but by far not least, the movie has a nice classic Steven Spielberg-ian feel which puts the sense of wonder and adventure back to sci-fi which, in my humble opinion, is often missing or buried under all those visual effects and pizzazz setpieces. Even good old Spielberg himself is not always able to pull it off: the movie makes you actually care about the characters because there's a real human backbone to the story. It's entertainment but it also has heart.

All this rests very much on the lead man Asa Butterfield who was 18 during the filming and turns 20 this April. Former child star of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", Scorsese's "Hugo" and "Ender's Game" fame, this guy has grown to become a fine young actor indeed. I very much enjoyed his soft but sure performance as an innocent and fragile alien braving the world unknown to him. He has found a seemingly perfect balance between strange, childlike and soulful that the role asks of him, and I'd be glad to see him getting some awards or nominations for this standout work. He even has this memorable, Pinocchio-ish appearance and style of moving which seems suitable for a person not used to Earth's gravity.

The other characters stay more in the background, so this turns out to be Asa Butterfield's show, and he more than fulfills the promise. The next most interesting performance comes from Oldman who ventures in the land of brashness and theatricality, in a good way. The aging thespian hasn't offered this kind of colorfulness for quite some time (in a big movie, at least) and I enjoyed it to the point of feeling that his character was underused. Holding him in the background makes sense in the context of a whole story, though.

If you find my score surprisingly high, please remember that it's made for a YA crowd, or at least a teenager in all of us. I would not recommend it alongside 8 out of 10 movies made for older viewer groups. Probably.

But 8 is not too generous. I liked "Space" very much and its overall quality more than compensates a shallow story which surely would work better longer. This could be a bona fide modern classic if the characters and events had more room to develop and breathe. Maybe in the form of (mini-)series or something.

If you like "The Space Between Us" and look for something similar to watch, I would recommend 2014's "The Fault in Our Stars" for moving YA story, or 2015's "Tomorrowland" as an uneven but good example of how to combine sci-fi and action in a YA movie.

I choose to end this review with an off-topic anecdote which I just happen to like very much:

Q: Why did astronaut leave his wife?
A: He needed more space… Expand

2 of 3 users found this helpful21

WrathfaceAlex

Mar 28, 2017

This was a satisfying watch for me, but the movie had to bend some laws of physics to make it all possible, and there seemed to be some plot-holes, even so it kept me interested all the way through.

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

Jarrod_Reviews

Feb 11, 2017

The Space Between Us: Look, I'm going to be frank, I was expecting this movie to be terrible. The trailers made it look like another unwatchable romance flick, the multiple delays which usually indicates a massive problem with the film, and an engaging premise dumbed down for most teenThe Space Between Us: Look, I'm going to be frank, I was expecting this movie to be terrible. The trailers made it look like another unwatchable romance flick, the multiple delays which usually indicates a massive problem with the film, and an engaging premise dumbed down for most teen audiences. To my shock, it wasn't awful but it's far from good. Let's start with what they did right, It looked pretty good, Asa Butterfield gives a good performance as some socially inept kid finding love, and the humor that stemmed from that worked. What didn't work? Gary Oldman gave the worst performance I've seen from him, he either didn't give a damn or was too hammy. The story was also very messy, jumping from one extreme to another, and the ending is just goddamn awful. In the end I would give "The Space Between Us" a High School Relationship/10, It may be cute and entertaining at times, but it's not well put together and not meant to last.… Expand

2 of 3 users found this helpful21

NightReviews

Feb 9, 2017

“What is your favourite thing about Earth?”

It may be such a simple yet overwhelming question, considering all the wonderful things that make up our world and each and every little thing that makes up all the good in all our individual lives. Yet one of my favourite slogans so far of 2017“What is your favourite thing about Earth?”

It may be such a simple yet overwhelming question, considering all the wonderful things that make up our world and each and every little thing that makes up all the good in all our individual lives. Yet one of my favourite slogans so far of 2017 is one that asks very deep and a heavy emotional response.

Sadly, the slogan seems to be one of the very few deep parts that comprise director Peter Chelsom’s newest inspirational film The Space Between Us. The UK director seems to be on some sort of positive cinema boost, given his last film Hector and the Search for Happiness is a parabolic film about one doctor’s real life pursuit of life’s greatest gift.

Sadly, with The Space Between Us, Chelsom’s handle on science fiction is very scarce, even though space accounts for a very small portion of his newest film. The Space Between Us is a love story through and through. Dabbling with elements of the who-dun-it narrative, as well as the coming of age story arc, Space is a modestly budgeted film with some great ambition that really doesn’t live up to the hype and one film that has its gaze far beyond the horizon. Think of it as a film that promises finding the gold at the end of the rainbow, only to really deliver Skittles, I mean, if Skittles are your thing.

The cosmic love story begins well before either of our love birds began their courting, nearly two decades before, when a young and ambitious astronaut, Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery) and her crew, become the first group of individuals to colonize and inhabit Mars for four years. Placed in the care of their precarious and idealist leader and founder, Nathaniel Shepard (Gary Oldman), Nathaniel’s Genesis program partners with NASA to deliver Sarah and her sacrificial crew to the unknown planet of Mars. Given that all the numbers, scenarios and outcomes were already pre-planned, the one situation no one anticipated, was Sarah pregnancy. Giving birth and losing her life before she makes it to Mars, the Genesis program agrees to make the child’s birth a complete classified secret. Luckily, Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) makes it safely to Mars, as we flash forward to Gardner’s adolescents. It is in Mars that Gardner grows up, interacting with the brightest scientists from NASA, who continue to occupy Mars, practically and implicitly contributing to Gardner upbringing, Gardner lacks many average teenage characteristics, despite his closest maternal relationship on the spaceship to botanist Kendra Wyndham (Carla Gugino). Gardner’s intellect is established quite early on, showing off how book smart and scientifically minded the youngster really is.

Bored with nothing but causing chaos aboard the station, Gardner uses his smarts to trick everything and everyone on Mars. Learning of his secrecy to Earth early on, Gardner begins using the Wi-Fi (yup, they have internet in Mars) to make new friends on Earth. Concealing his true identity and current situation to an online friend and potential love interest Tulsa (Britt Robertson), the two spark a friendship that originated on an Orphan based online chat room. As the two orphans begin developing a closer relationship thanks to futuristic FaceTiming and instant messaging to one another, it becomes quite clear that Gardner is ready to finally venture to Earth, despite his physical boundaries and various health issues, including his oversized space heart, brittle bones, his foreignness to gravity and his very poor human social skills.

While Gardner’s time spent on Mars is very limited, his caregiver and closest friend Kendra, begins campaigning for Gardner’s request to visit Earth, not only to finally see Tulsa, but to find out the identity of his father. Half way across the Universe, once on Earth, Gardner surprises Tulsa at school, where the two team up and break many laws in search of Gardner’s father. While discovering America, Gardner falls in love with Tulsa, and the two love birds steal their way to Arizona where they embark on an adventure that involves the Grand Canyon, hot air balloons and some pretty romantic locales.

Sadly, Space is a project that has been in development for quite some time, having Asa attached since before he was casted as Ender Wiggin in the sci-fi Ender’s Game. While many cast and crew moved on, Asa remained attached with the project until it was green lit, with Robertson as his Tulsa. Unfortunately, while Robertson and Butterfield continue to prove their strong acting skills on screen, the two never really convince audiences of their love story and romance, sharing an almost big sister/little brother type relationship instead.… Expand

1 of 3 users found this helpful12

MovieMantz

Dec 23, 2017

This was so bad i can't believe it. It's a bummer because I love Asa Butterfield. He deserves better and I hope his career doesn't get affected by this tragedy.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

GuardianWriting

Feb 9, 2017

haven't seen it yet, but was worst film i've seen tbh

can't wait to watch it! I'm sure it will be a great film! 10/10 - ign
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0 of 8 users found this helpful08

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