SPACE COWBOYS (2000)
Grade: C+
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenplay: Ken Kaufman, Howard Klausner
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, James Cromwell, William Devane, Marcia Gay Harden, Loren Dean, Courtney B. Vance
SPACE COWBOYS is a middle age fantasy. It's the kind of film where the old guys get all the best lines while the young guys take it with sheepish grins or straight faced anger, and the audience laughs and cheers "You tell em, Clint!" Critics have taken to calling it GRUMPY OLD ASTRONAUTS, which it sort of is for its first two acts, then, once these grumps get into outer space we get a slowed down to pace maker speed ARMAGEDDON where everything goes wrong and one of the boys must sacrifice his life (it'll be increasingly obvious who'll do so by the forty five minute mark) to make things right. The final shot is as haunting as it is implausible as it is completely out of sync with everything that came before it.
Surprisingly, SPACE COWBOYS contains more self deprecating humor than you'd expect from a movie directed by Eastwood and featuring such "manly" men as Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, and James Garner, who grin and grimace amid a flurry of false teeth jokes, losing eye sight jokes, everybody I used to know is dead jokes, out of shape jokes…these guys are truly too old for this shit. Much of the movie has the screenwriters devising one humiliating, torturous physical test after another; the senior citizens grunt and wheeze through eight mile jogs, they barely survive a bench press session, and at one point they're made to stand, sans trousers, in all their saggy assed glory before a young chick doctor. And by the way, if my ass looks half as good as Eastwood's when I'm seventy I'll surely die a happy man. But please, oh please don't give me Sutherland's ass.
The film commences with an old stand-by; a group of friends, none of whom have seen each other since their collective hey day, reunite to do another job on the ask of their unofficial leader Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood, so damn grizzled I practically expected him to growl when he first appears). Corvin, in his prime, was a hot shot NASA rocket scientist (!) who designed a Cod War-era satellite that, today, is on its way to crashing out of orbit. It's such an antiquated piece of machinery that none of the "dim bulbs" currently counting the days to retirement at NASA have the foggiest notion on how to fix it. Corvin is asked to provide the information needed to repair the gizmo but he stubbornly refuses, countering with the suggestion that NASA fly him and his old crew up into space. Well, it at least makes more sense then beaming up a bunch of psychotic oil drillers.
This leads to the traditionally wacky encounters wherein the hero finds his old friends in unexpected positions, like the craggy James Garner as a bargain basement Baptist priest, a pony tailed Donald Sutherland as the guy who tests roller coasters for speed, and Tommy Lee Jones (bull necked as ever) as a nutty prop plane pilot. Following the intros, all the aforementioned grunting and wheezing commences, punctuated by wisecracks and shouting matches between Eastwood and the mission leader played by James Cromwell (LA. CONFIDENTIAL) who acts so downright despicable he might as well have a British accent.
Clint seems to have paid a bit of mind to some of the criticisms hoisted upon many of his films, particularly how he often seems to cast community college graduates as his love interests. Here he casts an older lady (Barbara Babcock) as his wife (though she isn't given much screen time), Tommy Lee Jones romances the mature NASA lieutenant Sara Holland (Marcia Gay Harden), rather than her daughter, it's only Donald Sutherland who chases young girls, though he's playing the part of comic lecher. Eastwood also seems more game than ever to goof on his tough guy image, though not so much as to have him be any less than a superhero who succeeds in spite of all odds.
In many ways SPACE COWBOYS is like a less mature, vaudeville companion to Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN, the most brilliant film Clint ever lucked into. That was more a middle age nightmare about men past their prime, coming to grips or in some cases embracing old haunts. SPACE COWBOYS is about goofing on clueless youngsters, and acting even more heroic than they when it comes down to it. Much of the movie coasts on the chemistry of its quartet; these guys are legends and it's tough not to derive some pleasure from seeing them send up their cut in stone images. But still, when I go to a movie I tend to look for more than a plethora of old timer gags
I can't say that I thoroughly enjoyed it but, nonetheless, I had a pretty good time at the showing. This is an amiable crowd pleaser that will probably appeal to youngsters dreaming of space travel as well as those middle aged men hoping to see Eastwood quit that whining he did through THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, drop the negative character traits of his dogged reporter in TRUE CRIME, and just return to the figure of ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN and HONKYTONK MAN; the tough straight man with a hint of comic wile.
SPACE COWBOYS is the last film in who knows how long that will sit privy to the sounds of middle aged laughter. And that's something that shouldn't be discounted when for the last two years film makers seemed to be trying to make stars out of the collective casts of the WB. These guys are like vintage wines, and while I didn't grow up idolizing them (I was born in '79, and it did take me a while to warm up to Eastwood's particular brand of wooden minimalism) I can certainly admire their ripened talents. The movie itself is more of a crusty homage to the old stars' personalities with silly space machinations thrown in. I didn't really care for that. I would have liked to see them at the service of an actual story. But many won't mind either way and if you're a long time fan you'll likely lap this one up.
http://www.geocities.com/incongruity98 Reeling (Ron Small)
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