I don’t understand why The Space Between Us received bad reviews.
I found it to be heart warming, engaging and ultimately a story about first love, taking the term long distance relationship to a whole new level.
Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield, The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas) is the first human born on Mars.
His existence is kept a secret by Nathaniel Shepherd’s (Gary Oldman, Harry Potter) team Genesis, who has set out to colonise the Red Planet, for fear of a PR problem back on earth.
Finally, 16 years later, now a teenager eager to find himself Gardner travels back home with astronaut and mother figure Kendra Wyndham. (Carla Gugino).
The first thing he does is escape quarantine to find Tulsa (Britt Roberston, The Longest Ride), a teenager who lives in Colorado with whom Gardner has started an online friendship with on Mars.
It is never explained how they manage to chat in real time but it’s a movie about their friendship and ultimately falling in love so science doesn’t matter.
Asa Butterfield perfectly captures Gardner’s naivety, innocence and childlike wonder as he asks everyone he meets what their favourite thing about Earth is.
Having grown up on Mars he has never experienced rain, or seen the ocean or eaten a hamburger.
However, it is a race against time to get him back to the Red Planet as problems arise when scientists discover Gardner’s organs are failing, as they cannot withstand Earth’s atmosphere.
It is a new spin on the clichéd first love and too young to die story line, resulting in a surprisingly thought provoking and pleasant movie.
