Long way to go

Fans of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial could argue the 1982 hit serves as inspiration for The Space Between Us. In the new film, however, the stranger to Earth is a human teenager. After arriving from Mars, where he was born and raised, Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) relies on a loyal friend to help him stay one step ahead of the authorities. E.T. succeeded by keeping the story focused on a boy (named Elliott, by the way) and his endangered alien pal, but The Space Between Us distracts with several characters trying to resolve their own issues.

Astronaut Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery) leads a mission to East Texas, a NASA settlement nestled into the Martian landscape. During the seven-month space voyage, she discovers she’s pregnant. She gives birth to a baby boy just after landing, but she dies of complications. At NASA headquarters back on Earth, mission director Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) orders that the new arrival be kept secret from the public.

Fast-forward 16 years to 2034: Gardner is a tech-savvy teen confined to East Texas, Mars. He has made one clandestine friend, Tulsa (Britt Robertson), a pretty but lonely senior at a Western U.S. high school. They often engage in instantaneous video chats (despite the fact that even when Earth and Mars are at a point closest to each other, signals take more than three minutes to travel between the two planets). Gardner lies to Tulsa, though, telling her that poor health prevents him from leaving his New York City apartment.

Gardner eventually gains permission to travel to Earth. Soon after arriving, he escapes the facility in which he’s supposed to remain. He locates Tulsa, who initially doesn’t believe his confession about his true origins. Still, she agrees to help him find his father, his main purpose for coming to Earth. Young love blossoms, of course, and the film becomes a fairly innocent romance.

But there’s more. Tulsa deals with her own sense of alienation, having moved in and out of several foster homes. Nathaniel grapples with the guilt he feels for effectively having imprisoned a boy on another planet. Add in a woman astronaut regretting her decision not to have children. And to top it off, Gardner is growing gravely ill (as E.T. did), his frail body unable to withstand the effects of Earth’s stronger gravity.

After the film’s protracted start, an enjoyable middle unfolds. Gardner clomps around clumsily, endearingly experiencing Earth’s wonders. He nearly jumps out of his skin when a horse walks toward him. But the film covers a lot of ground—red and green—in under two hours, barreling through a flimsy, contrived ending.

One positive scene occurs early on when a large-screen sonogram of preborn Gardner is beamed back to NASA headquarters. Nathaniel recognizes the situation for what it is.

“She’s not just an astronaut,” Nathaniel exclaims of Sarah. “She’s a mother now.”

The near absence of explicit language and a single, brief scene of sensuality make for relatively safe viewing that barely merits the PG-13 stamp. But one very unsafe moment deserves mention. Incidental to the plot, it’s no spoiler to reveal that Gardner unsuccessfully—for lack of a better word—attempts to kill himself when his health is severely compromised.

“I couldn’t decide where I was born,” he tells Tulsa, “but I can decide where I die.”

This scene might be reason enough for young viewers—recently exposed to a disturbing trend of teens streaming their suicides live on the internet—to keep some space between themselves and this film.