APOLLO 13
A film review by Mike Gaines
Copyright 1995 Mike Gaines
It's not a documentary; it's not a drama. This is the docudrama from Ron Howard who brought us BACKDRAFT, PARENTHOOD, and FAR AND AWAY. I think that this is one of the best movies to come out this summer and I hope that people go see this instead of JUDGE DREDD. What makes this movie stand out above the others is that it's a wonderful story, *and* it actually happened! Part of the reason why movies have been getting worse is that the stories have become so unbelievable that they've become parodies of themselves. This movie laughs *at* the others.
Not one person in this movie was miscast. Tom Hanks will not win an Oscar for his role this year; the movie was not built as an Oscar vehicle. Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan portray their characters beautifully and realistically. Ron Howard does turn up the emotion level a tinge high at the end, but besides that he does a remarkable job of making the movie seem as much of a documentary as he can. The computer graphics and the zero-gravity footage from the Vomit Comet are beautiful.
There are some Hollywood-isms that I had a hard time swallowing. First was when Jim Lovell's car wouldn't start; second was when the overhead projector at Mission Control died for no apparent reason; third was when Jim's wife lost her wedding ring in the shower. All these little scenes showing bits of bad luck to the characters in the film didn't seem to move the story along. The only problem is that you can't tell if these things actually happened or if they were written into the script just for the sake of showing the bad luck that was happening to all the characters that week in April, 1970. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I don't know myself after studying astronomy for so long, but I don't know the details of this Apollo mission in detail.
-- Mike Gaines starman@cnj.digex.net
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