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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Brand: Warner Brothers EAN: 0012569822924 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Manufacturer: Warner Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Warner Home Video Region Code: 1 Release Date: July 10, 2007 Running Time: 104 minutes Sales Rank: 8514 Studio: Warner Home Video Theatrical Release Date: February 23, 2007
Product Description: All systems are "Go" for Charles Farmer. He's faced bank foreclosure neighborhood naysayers and a government alarmed by his huge purchase of high-grade fuel but now he's ready to blast into space inside the homemade rocket he built in his barn. Just be home in time for dinner Charlie. Billy Bob Thornton portrays Charlie in this charmer about chasing dreams...and about what it means to be a family. 10000 pounds of rocket fuel alone can't lift Charlie into the heavens. He needs a launch/recovery crew and he has one of the best: his wife (Virginia Madsen) and children dreamers all. They have liftoff. Our spirits have uplift. Gravity cannot hold down our dreams. The Astronaut Farmer is that kind of movie.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY UPC: 012569822924 Manufacturer No: 82292
Amazon.com: If you can give The Astronaut Farmer the big, bounding leap of faith it requires, you'll probably enjoy this good-natured film about the importance of holding on to your dreams. The title character (and the dreamer in question) is Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton), a Texas ranch owner and former aeronautics engineer who's got a homemade rocket in his barn and a dream to blast into space. Even though Charlie's deeply in debt and threatened with foreclosure, his wife (Virginia Madsen) and kids are deeply supportive of Charlie's Earth-orbit mission, even when he attracts the glaring attention of a seasoned Air Force colonel (played by Bruce Willis, in an uncredited role), the FAA, the FBI, and the national media. "If we don't have our dreams, we have nothing," says Charlie at a particularly desperate impasse, and this loopy, offbeat, and unabashedly sentimental drama embraces that message with disarming sincerity.
Suspension of disbelief is a challenge when the movie glosses over so many of its logistical details (like, where does one buy an old NASA space capsule?), and in trying for a kind of Capra-esque, eccentrically Western spin on the American dream, the Polish twins--director Michael and cowriter/actor Mark (making their mainstream debut after such indie hits as Twin Falls, Idaho and Northfork)--are only marginally successful in making Charlie's ambition genuinely believable. The film works much better as a kind of post space-age fable for families, and it's just involving enough to make its climax emotionally rewarding, mostly because Thornton, Madsen, and their costars (including Bruce Dern and Tim Blake Nelson) handle the delicate material with the earnestness it needs to be marginally convincing. Elton John's "Rocket Man" is predictably heard over the closing credits (accordingly, Charlie's launch-time is "zero hours, nine a.m."), and at a time when several adventurous entrepreneurs (including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos) are gradually developing a civilian space-flight industry, The Astronaut Farmer is an admirable yet forgivably flawed reminder that we should never stop reaching for the stars. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - never give up
this movie was very good, this movie send a good message about not giving up on what you believe. it was a charm. people should check it out.
Rating: - Absolutley Awful
I'm sorry. this film sucks. I turned it off after a half hour and thatr was being kind. Unlikeable characters, unabsorbing story and laughable setups. Truly disappointing. Godd idea, terribly esecuted. A misfire on every level. Billy Bob is much than this drivel.
Rating: - Do we no longer dare to dream?
Look, the logistics and expense of building an actual rocket (in a dairy barn, of all places)--and then launching it--are as preposterous and as farfetched as an elephant speaking French.
But that's not the point.
Here's the point. During one particularly frustrating moment in THE ASTRONAUT FARMER, Billy Bob's character (appropriately named Charlie Farmer) laments that when he was a child, he was told (as all children in America are told) that he could be anything--or do ... Read More
Rating: - Well done, not overdone.
I was expecting something else, but instead I got a story that was (although cliched) was touching and well acted. The dialogue is witty and spot-on. The cinematography and music is very good. Don't
let the title fool you.
Rating: - Entertaining
I first saw this movie in a plane during 2007 and wanted to add it to my collection since, although the story is unbelievable, I think is funny and nice to watch with the kids. Couldn't find it in stores. I think is a better alternative than many others around that did better in the box office.