“The Space Between Us” is a movie with a unique story. A female astronaut named Sarah Elliot embarks for Mars along with five other astronauts and learns she is pregnant while en route. She dies giving birth, and the man behind the mission, Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) weeps in shock as he watches her die on a monitor. Her son, Gardner (Asa Butterfield), at 16, has been communicating online with a girl in Colorado named Tulsa (Britt Robertson). He longs to go to his home planet of Earth and meet her. Following a surgery to help prepare him for Earth’s atmosphere and gravity, his wish comes true. He escapes from quarantine after landing on Earth to search for Tulsa. She thinks he’s a bit crazy when they meet, but she also is drawn to his directness in saying what he is thinking. And he is nuts about her. The movie features modern hardware including a self-driving car with a man asleep behind the steering wheel!
Shepherd and the woman that cared for Gardner on Mars, Kendra, try to track him down while Gardner experiences excitement with Tulsa and new discoveries such as rain and eating, get this now, a Mars candy bar. However, when he begins to suffer nose bleeds it is obvious that something is terribly wrong with him. Will Gardner survive? Will he find the father he is in search of? Will he have to return to Mars? One of the lines of the film says that courage is really fear that said its prayers, and Gardner and Tulsa both show a lot of courage in helping each other out. Regrettably, the movie features a sex scene with the main characters in a sleeping bag, and due to this scene we cannot award “The Space Between Us” our Dove Family-Approved Seal.
