Space Cadet (2024)
I’ve been putting off seeing Space Cadet because IMDb’s photo of Emma Roberts gaping while wearing a pilot’s helmet didn’t appeal to me, but then I saw that the movie is currently ranked number six on Amazon Prime’s Top Ten Movies, so yeah, journalistic integrity and room reading and all that stuff. Having watched the movie, I kinda wish I had stuck with my first instinct and skipped it.
Florida party girl Rex Simpson is a bartender who has always dreamed of being an astronaut. She’s talented at science and physics and likes devising various gadgets, but when her mom was terminally ill she got off track. Rex just goes on partying and working with her dad, who gives paranormal-themed tours that are more themed than paranormal.
Then her very well-meaning friend Nadine decides to send in an e-mail Rex wrote about being an astronaut to NASA, who are recruiting for their new cadet program. The e-mail is completely hypothetical and Rex is completely unqualified, but Nadine fudges a few details and Rex is in.
Her fellow Astronaut Candidates, or AsCans(!), are completely aghast that Rex has gotten anywhere near NASA, but she somehow makes friends and escapes the various eliminations, whereas plenty of her colleagues, all of whom are vastly more qualified than she is, somehow get the axe one by one.
It helps that there’s a really cute British guy, Logan helping make the decisions, not to mention Rex keeps managing to learn various advanced skills on the spot, at least enough to keep she and the people sharing space with her from getting killed or something. Like flying a fighter jet or spacewalking. However, Rex may end up surprising everyone.
Groan. Space Cadet gets compared to Legally Blonde constantly and it’s not just hyperbole—it wants so, so much to be Legally Blonde. Rex is a party girl. No one takes her seriously despite the fact that she’s got a serious side to her. She applies to a prestigious training program that no one thinks she can handle. We see several straitlaced board members deciding to let her in even though they can’t stop wincing. She pulls up to said training program while some peppy pop song plays over the scene, although in Elle’s case the song was “We Could Still Belong Together” by Lisa Loeb and Rex gets a Steppenwolf cover by The DeeKompressors. She has a sit-down meeting with her fellow classmates and everyone tries to impress each other before cringing at how crazy and ditzy Rex seems. Rex finds some obliging classmate to mentor her and begins to shock everyone with how well she takes to her new environment. After a seeming fall from grace she redeems herself in a big way and is suddenly a huge star.
Did I ruin Space Cadet? Sorry. It’s just that impossible to unsee the similarities between Elle and Rex once things get going.
To be fair, though, the two aren’t completely alike, because for one thing, Legally Blonde is way more fun and way more intelligent, in no small part due to screenwriters Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz sitting in on actual law classes at Stanford, plus producer Marc Platt is an attorney. Elle doesn’t lie on her application to Harvard Law. She honestly puts the work in to pass her LSAT and does so with flying colors, so she’s not a Mary Sue by any stretch of the imagination, and her development is relatively realistic. No one thinks Elle should bite off more than she can chew as a law student, which is why Emmett mentors her on her first real case. No matter what, though, Elle stays true to herself, only she’s better than she thought she could be.
Meanwhile, Rex, who probably hasn’t even flown a paper airplane, is entrusted with piloting an elite F-18 and making repairs to the International Space Station as if neither are a big deal. Um, what? It takes years for pilots and astronauts to get certified to fly a fighter plane or go into space because there’s no room for BS, yet Rex masters everything in a few hours.
Not to mention, where have the qualified people gone? Was there no one else who could do the jobs Rex was doing? Like, I dunno, Rex’s friends who had made it through the AsCan program and were floating around inside the International Space Station? There would have been nothing wrong with Rex pulling a Ken Mattingly and advising them from the ground, but the movie had to get her into space or die trying.
I know Space Cadet is supposed to be a light, fun movie, but when credibility gets stretched as far as it does in this case, fun is harder to come by and everything is mostly stupid. Emma Roberts keeps it all slightly bearable, but I found myself longing for her to make another Nancy Drew movie, age and the passage of time be darned.
Space Cadet is currently streaming on Amazon. Rated PG-13.
My grade: F
Principal Cast: Emma Roberts, Tom Hopper, Poppy Liu, Gabrielle Union, Kuhoo Verma, Desi Lydic, Sebastian Yatra, Sam Robards, Dave Foley, Yasha Jackson, Andrew Call, Josephine Huang, Troy Iwata, Caroline Concannon, John Ahlin, Tomas Matos, Fergie L. Philippe, Alli Brown
Directed and written by Liz W. Garcia.