Some years ago I heard an amazing news report that there were plans for future trips to Mars, where all of the people who were going to go to Mars would take years to get there and more years to start a colony and then never return home. For a long time after this news report, I wondered why anyone would want to do something like this because essentially it’s a death sentence and you would never see the planet earth again. You just had to wonder how many of the people who one day would make a dangerous life decision like this and then on the way there, or after experiencing many terrifying hardships, would later greatly regret their decision to leave the planet Earth to eventually die on Mars.

One can only imagine the thousands of mishaps that could occur during a mission to colonize Mars, including traveling for months or years to the planet, then after you arrive and trying to build a permanent colony that can support human life millions of miles from earth. I then thought that this idea is a great story for Hollywood and recently there have already been several movies about traveling to Mars, last year The Martian starring Matt Damon as one example. The Martian addressed several of the many possible mishaps that could happen if we ever send several people to Mars and then attempt to return them back to Earth. Later this year the movie “Life” will be released about a trip to Mars, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds.

Over the years, there have probably been many conference room tables in Hollywood where producers have pitched their stories about traveling to and colonizing Mars. The possible stories about a trip like this are so interesting and compelling so we will definitely see many more movies about Mars in future years. Considering all of this, one has to wonder how a movie as ridiculous as “The Space Between Us” could have been greenlighted by any producer.

The start of this movie and the idea behind it I thought was very promising. A group of scientists and astronauts were about to travel to Mars but one of the astronauts is pregnant prior to leaving, but soon after this you realize that there is no way the medical scientists working at NASA would not notice that a female astronaut was pregnant before leaving the Earth to travel to Mars. Some 18 years later the internet relationship between her son who is now living his life on Mars and some young woman who lives in Colorado is also absurd as is the later explanation that he is able to travel back to earth to meet her and then try and find his father. Colonizing Mars is also an ambition that is probably 15 to 20 years in the future and accepting this fact, this entire film looked like it was taking place in the present day, which was yet another illogical part of this contrived story but was probably done this way to save the budget of the film.

The entire story of The Space Between Us is contrived and ridiculous throughout and made me believe that in order to save on special effects, the producers decided to re-write this film into a love story and even a chase film that all happens on Earth. In the end, there is an attempt to provide a twist that I saw coming a mile away, so even the ending had no real redeeming qualities. I was surprised to see two respected actors in this film, Carla Gugino and Gary Oldman because they must have read this script and still took their parts. It is one thing to remain relevant and active in Hollywood, it is quite another thing to resolve as an actor to only make quality movies.

This is a pretty bad movie that should have been sent to the DVD shelves.

Is it enough to produce a movie that really doesn’t have any story, but some good acting and about 30 connected and disconnected scenes? Some people might be entertained by a movie like this, I was not. I was more annoyed by the fact that there was no story within this entire film and throughout almost every single scene there was more non-stop chain smoking than I have ever seen in any movie, mostly by Annette Benning. This movie takes place mostly in the 70’s and is about a single mother played by Benning and her 15-year-old son, played by Jucas Jade Zumman. They live in a run-down house and have taken in 3 borders to afford to live in this house and this movie is all about different disconnected scenes that are about these 5 people, with really no noticeable connected story. Yes, the acting of all the actors in this movie was good, but not good enough to overcome the non-stop chain smoking and the fact that what little story there was, was quite boring. On top of this, the individual scenes about the 5 main actors were not compelling enough to hold my attention for 2 hours.

I remember thinking that perhaps the producers mentioned a later lung cancer death of one of the actors 20 years in the future to perhaps cover themselves in case of a lawsuit due to the overly nightmarish smoking that was constantly going on with not only Benning’s character but several other characters as well. Other actors in this movie include Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup.

Due to the constant and annoying non-stop chain smoking and disconnected boring story, I cannot recommend this movie.

The beginning of the movie “The Comedian” for me gave me an idea of what could have been a much better movie. Examining the life of someone who has either tried to be a stand-up comedian for many years and has never really made it, or follow the life of someone like Brett Butler who appears as a stand-up at the beginning of this film and had her own TV show in 1993 “Grace Under Fire” . After her show ended 5 years later Butler has tried to find that level of fame again, probably by still doing stand-up in seedy clubs like the one at the start of this movie and this difficult life of chasing show-business fame would be a very compelling story for a much better movie.

From an outsider looking at the life of anyone who thinks they can be a stand-up comedian it appears to be a dark depressing life of low paying gigs, heckling and drunk audiences, bombing many times over before you master the this most difficult art form and years of dues all for the hopes of a miracle down the road. This life includes traveling around the country and living day by day in run down motels, wondering if the cost of traveling from one club to the next is going to be more or less than you are making by performing your act at the next performance. Living a life like this is not for the faint of heart, but in my opinion, making a real life documentary or movie about a person who chooses a life like this would be fascinating and far more interesting than the Comedian which turned out to be a surprisingly bad movie.

During one of the talk show interviews Robert De Niro did to promote this movie he revealed that he worked very hard to perfect the art of being a stand-up comedian. The problem is that for whatever reason, De Niro, despite his acting talent has virtually no ability as a stand-up comedian. What is worse about this film, is that during the four times De Niro performed comedy in front of an audience in this bad movie, the material was not only not funny but disgusting and raunchy. Being disgusting and raunchy will never overcome material that is not funny. The worst of his performances was the last one he made at a retirement home in Florida and even one of the female patients in the audience said what everybody was thinking, “is this supposed to be funny”?

De Niro has made a few bad movies lately, the last very bad one was “Dirty Grandpa” and now this one, but he has also made a few very good movies as well, including Hands of Stone and Joy. At this point in his career, I see no reason why he would ever make a movie like this because one of the main points of becoming rich and famous as an actor is that you can control your own destiny and never take a bad role just because of money. The movie The Comedian will probably encourage all of his fans ask him, “what the hell were you thinking”? This bad film is far beneath Robert De Niro and the long list of actors who appear in this production.

As for the screenplay, there is no real story here, just a series of events that occur with Deniro, who plays a former TV comedy star like Brett Butler and his girlfriend played by Leslie Mann. Harvey Keitel is also in this movie as Leslie Mann’s father and there are numerous unfunny scenes of anger between Robert De Niro and Keitel in this movie that are nothing more than temporary distractions as you desperately wait for these very long two hours to come to an end.

Despite the bad script and story for The Comedian, there are a remarkably large number of famous comedians and actors that have cameos, including Billy Crystal, Cloris Leachman, Charles Grodin, Danny Devito and even Jimmy Walker. Despite all of the cameos and some small parts of this film that do work, I cannot recommend this movie for about ten different reasons, starting with the horrible, awkward, raunchy and unfunny comedy performances that De Niro’s character gives throughout this bad film. This is one movie that should have went straight to DVD.